


home is wherever i'm with you

by leetlebird



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-30
Updated: 2017-06-27
Packaged: 2018-11-07 00:40:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 23,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11047698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leetlebird/pseuds/leetlebird
Summary: Jeff's good at hockey. He's good at hiding his feelings for Parse. Most days, he's pretty good at doing both at the same time.Then Jack Zimmermann gets traded to the Aces, and it's not like Jeff's jealous of the way Parse gravitates toward Zimmermann like he can't get enough -- really, Jeff's not jealous -- but this is probably a sign that he needs to get a little worse at hiding his feelings and a little better at confessing them.(Well, you know what they say about old dogs and new tricks.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My first shot at a Parswoops/Troyson story. (Also, oddly enough, my first shot at a story where Kent is physically present.) I realized once I started writing that it's probably not a good thing that I've never watched a full NHL game in my life.... and all my characters are professional hockey players... but I'm sure it's fine. WHAT COULD GO WRONG. 
> 
> (I was this close to titling this one "i wanna cut to the feeling," mostly because CRJ is my lord and savior, but that doesn't quite fit the tone. Still, you should listen to Cut to the Feeling, because a. it's good, and b. Jeff would so be a Carly stan.)
> 
> also heads up that I'm fairly certain that Jeff has a slight alcohol problem. I wouldn't term it an addiction or anything quite that severe, but he doesn't necessarily use it in a healthy way either. be safe!!

He had gone out partying with his team at least fifty times by now -- if “partying” is what you wanted to call the way Jeff downed three beers before loosening up enough to smile huge at everything Parse said, leaning into Parse’s side like it was nothing -- but every time he spills out of another club with his shoulder bumping against Parse’s beside him, the raucous voices of their teammates drifting into the cold desert air above them, Jeff can’t help but marvel at how alive he feels. Alive, and good, and right where he needs to be.

Becker and Towney are fucking around with Ray, who always drinks too much while it’s the off-season and he still can, trying to trip him even though Ray looks like he’s about to puke. Dressler is working on flagging down a cab to ferry the seven of them home, but if the two cabs that have already sped past him are any indication, he’s kind of shit at getting them to stop. (Dressler never has known how to be aggressive off the ice.) And Jeff’s lungs are full of smoky, dirty, wonderful Vegas air, and his blood feels soft with alcohol, and he smiles into Parse’s shoulder as he wraps his arms around his captain and pretends to stumble sideways, laughing as Parse almost falls over with him.

“Jesus, Swoops,” Parse says. “You asshole.”

“You love me,” Jeff grins. Which is true, but not in the same way that he loves Parse. Even saying that simple thing -- that inversion of what he knows he should say -- is a rush of adrenaline, a twinge of pain. And if that’s not an apt description of being friends with Kent Parson, Jeff thinks, but he wouldn’t trade it for anything, even as Parse pries himself out of Jeff’s grip and finally helps Dressler flag down a cab.

Under the yellow light of a downtown Las Vegas club, Parse almost glows. Like an angel, Jeff would say, except one thing he loves about Parse is the fact that he’s such a complete and total shithead. But he’s beautiful: relaxed and tanned and golden like a trophy. 

Jeff wants him so much it’s overwhelming.

Behind him, Lyle gives Jeff a light flick to the back of the head. “Staring,” he says. Gentle, but a reprimand. Jeff grimaces and turns away from Parse to lean into his defensive partner -- Jeff’s extra touchy after a few beers, and Lyle has never minded. “Didn’t you say you’d tell him soon?” Lyle asks neutrally, his voice so quiet that even Jeff can barely hear him.

“I’m gonna,” Jeff says, or maybe whines, and he’s buzzed on just three-and-a-half beers because he’s a piece of shit lightweight despite clocking in at just under two hundred pounds, so he can’t quite manage to be as quiet as he should be. “I’m just waiting for the right time.”

Lyle shakes his head, but it’s not judgmental. “You always say that.”

  


  


  


*** 

  


  


  


When Jeff Troy was drafted to the Aces in 2010, Kent Parson had just been tapped for his first year as captain, one of the youngest players to ever be chosen for the job. Jeff had felt elated to play for a Cup-winning team, sure, but he’d also been anxious that he’d somehow fuck things up, and that a team that had won the Cup just the year before would tank now that Jeff Troy was part of the line-up.

  


(As if he was that important.)

  


Parse was a great captain, though, making Jeff feel right at home. That was different from what Jeff expected; since Parse was one of the more elite players in the whole fucking league, Jeff had been intimidated at first. As far as the press was concerned, Kent Parson was an NHL triple threat -- good-looking, more than good on the ice, and going places.

And after years of carefully mastered compartmentalization -- which is a fancy way of saying “never look at a teammate _that_ way” -- Jeff hadn’t felt even the slightest premonition that Parse would be a problem. Sure, he was unfairly attractive, and watching him dart through lines of defensemen, hands soft and skates glinting under the arena lights, made Jeff weak in the knees, but Jeff was nothing if not an objective admirer of good hockey, and that was all it was.

So no, Jeff hadn’t noticed that he was a goner until four months into that first season, one of many equally mundane nights crashing in the hotel room he shared with Parse on away games.

  


(He should have been sharing with Brandon Lyle, his defensive partner, but Jeff had a longstanding superstition that required he always room with _anyone_ but his own partner. He’d carried this tradition over from his time playing for the Windsor Jr. Spitfires, and Aces management had seen far weirder shit, so they were tolerant enough to go along with it. 

Jeff hadn’t even asked for Parse to be his roommate -- the universe had done that for him.)

  


Their hotel room had been silent, and Jeff was too preoccupied with visualizing their upcoming game to feel the tension simmering under Parse’s skin, buzzing in the air around them. Finally, Parse had interrupted Jeff as he was reviewing the new plays, Parse keeping his eyes on his computer screen when he said, “What’s the best way to, like, casually let it drop in conversation with the guys that I’m gay?”

Jeff could never remember what he said to that. Probably something stupid.

But he did remember the light blush that had dusted across Parse’s cheekbones, the frustrated way Parse clenched his jaw in response to feeling his face warm despite his best efforts to seem unaffected. Jeff remembered the dark blue of Parse’s eyes once he finally looked up, wide and scared even as he tried to bluff his way through it.

  


(He remembered the way Parse’s voice had remained almost level, only giving him away with the slightest twist around the word _gay_ , like he was pushing it out of his throat by sheer force of will. There was nothing braver, Jeff had thought, than Kent Parson saying that word, and something warm settled under Jeff’s ribcage in that moment. 

_Oh_ , he’d thought. _Shit._ )

  


In the end, Jeff had helped Parse tell the cool guys on the team, knowing that the news would make its way to the less-cool guys eventually. And Jeff had ignored the knot of apprehension building in his stomach, the fear that someday he would find himself in the same position. He wasn’t sure if he even _wanted_ to come out in the future, but he was more than willing to shoulder the task of helping Parse do it. 

And when everyone who Parse wanted to know finally knew, Parse had exhaled and let his head drop into his hands one afternoon when they were the last ones in the locker room. Jeff hadn’t thought twice about reaching over and rubbing soothing circles across Parse’s back. He’d resisted the stupid urge to run his fingers through Parse’s messy hair, though, even as the ends of his fingers tingled with that same old need to make Parse feel better, to feel safe. “You’re good,” Jeff had promised. “You’ve got this.”

  


  


  


  


Later, when Parse had let his guard down completely -- a rare occurrence -- and told Jeff how much it meant to him that Jeff was still comfortable touching him like always even now that Jeff knew he was gay, Jeff didn’t know what to say.

  


  


  


*** 

  


  


  


The season is off to a good start, even though it kind of sucks when Jeff’s parents call him and scold him for twenty minutes after he’s caught on camera brushing past two fans (with a quick apology -- not that his mom cares) who’d been waiting for his autograph at a public Aces event.

  


(“I had to pee so bad,” Jeff whines into the phone. “And I’d already signed, like, a bajillion autographs. And talked to all their kids. For fifteen minutes.”

“But you didn’t talk to _those_ fans,” his dad says. “And they waited fifteen minutes, too.”

Jeff bribes the PR staff to track down the couple he ignored, later, and tweets a photo with them just so his parents won’t think they raised an asshole. He’d say he hates it, knowing they’re watching him like this, but the truth is he kind of loves how they’ll always keep him on the straight and narrow. Not everyone’s lucky enough to have parents who care like that.)

  


But -- anyway -- the season is off to a good start, and the Aces nearly sweep their first run of away games. The craziest thing about playing here, at least in Jeff’s opinion, is the fans. Back when he’d been drafted and the team was still building up its reputation, even after that first Cup win, he’d secretly thought the Aces would never have a real fanbase, not like the other league teams did. Everyone knew Las Vegas wasn’t a hockey town.

But he’d been wrong. Everyone loves a winner, and the Aces seem to do nothing but win. Everyone also loves Kent Parson -- you’d be hard-pressed to find a list of the best active NHL players that doesn’t include him in the top three, plus he has the whole Instagram thing going for him -- and the #90 jersey brings in a fucking _ridiculous_ amount of revenue all on its own. 

Point is, their games sell out almost every night, he can eat for free at sixteen local restaurants (that he knows of), and if he goes out on the town with Parse, everything takes ten times longer because of all the fans who see the smirk and the blonde cowlick -- even hidden under a hat, they always see it -- and immediately form a mob dedicated to the adulation of Kent Parson.

It’s not quite so bad when he’s out with Lyle, but there are still way more people asking for autographs when it’s the two of them than when Jeff is by himself. Jeff knows he’s not the most recognizable or famous player, and Lyle is one of only thirty-odd Black players in the NHL, making him instantly more memorable to casual fans -- plus he’s a little better than Jeff is, okay -- so it’s only slightly insulting when the third fan this _week_ gushes over Parse and Lyle for five minutes before apologetically asking Jeff if he’s a hockey player, too.

“Nah, him? He just follows us around, it’s kinda weird,” Parse says as he signs the kid’s McDonald’s receipt. 

Jeff laughs it off and waits for the group of kids -- they must be in, what, ninth grade? -- to shuffle off. “You sure we should keep looking for this place? I’m afraid that if we stay out much longer we’ll get trampled by all my adoring fans. They’ve gotta be around here somewhere. Getting stronger by the hour.”

“Yeah, all six of them,” Lyle ribs.

“It’s okay, Swoops,” Parse says. “You know I’m your number-one fan in my heart, right?”

Jeff couldn’t fight the smile off his face even if he tried. “Uh-huh.”

“Great, then shut up and let’s go to this fucking taco stand. Nutella tacos, I’m telling you. They’re disgusting.” 

Lyle slides a look Jeff’s way, the gleam in his eyes frankly alarming. “Parser, you hurt JT’s feelings. He’s staying right here until you say please. Right, JT?”

As Parse looks Jeff over, thinking about it, Jeff reflects that this is another of those things that he should hate. The Nutella tacos, the shitty nickname, the way Lyle can tease him about his crush right in front of Parse (because Lyle’s an asshole). “Whatever.”

But when Parse rolls his eyes, grabs Jeff by the hand, and says, “Swoops, would you _please_ stuff horrible tacos in your face with me?”, the only thing Jeff hates is the way he can feel himself blushing.

And the way Lyle pokes him in the kidney-region, snickering, as they keep walking. He hates that too.

  


  


  


*** 

  


  


  


They have two away games in a row -- emerging from both holding onto the #1 spot in their division, because they’re the fucking Las Vegas Aces -- but nothing feels better than winning their first home game of the season. To Jeff, that one win always feels like a good luck charm, an omen of how the rest of the season will go.

So, yeah, nothing feels better than that first home win, but barreling into their favorite bar after the presser ends, the entire team all together outside of the rink for the first time in months, does feel pretty damn good too. If asked, Jeff would say they’re gonna get rowdy, Towney and Gordo would say it’ll be lit, and Parse would groan and say they’re all embarrassing themselves. 

But Parse never drinks, so it’s sort of his job, now, to shake his head judgmentally as the rest of them get stupider and stupider. Sometimes the bar staff play old 90’s and 00’s pop hits just to humor Parse, but tonight they stick to their regular soundtrack of classic rock and oldies.

“The fuck did I do to deserve this,” Parse mumbles into his pop -- because fuck the other guys on the team, Jeff thinks, it’s _pop_ , not soda -- as Motorhead’s “Ace of Spades” plays. They always play that here when the Aces win, which Jeff thinks is nice of them, even though Parse keeps trying to schmooze them into changing it to “New Romantics.”

  


(“Just because there’s one line about ‘playing my ace’ doesn’t mean it’s our victory song now,” Gordo says.

“Nobody asked you,” Parse grumbles, as the woman behind the bar who picks the songs laughs at him for the hundredth time.)

  


Jeff pats Parse’s hair. “It’s not so much what you _did_ to deserve it, just who you are as a person. This is, like, karma.”

“Fuck you, Jeff, you’re supposed to be the nice one.”

“Watch your language, Parser,” Gordo calls from further down the bar. “There’s kids around.”

Parse swings around to survey the floor, like there might actually be kids in this bar at 11:45 P.M. “You’re full of shit, Gordo, there isn’t a single kid in this place.”

Gordo grins and points at Jamie, the most precious rookie to possibly ever exist, who’s already suspiciously pink and giggly despite being underage. “The hell are you talking about? There’s a fucking toddler right there.”

“Hey,” Jamie complains, making an indignant gesture that causes him to spill most of his beer on the floor.

The whole crowd of Aces bursts into laughter, and Jeff watches the way Parse’s eyes brighten as he joins in. The lines of tension leave Parse’s body, and for a moment Jeff is almost frozen with the desire to run his hands over Parse’s shoulders, his sides. He wants that reminder that Parse is real, close. Their elbows are pressed together, warm and casual like always, but it never feels like enough, especially not when Jeff is drinking, getting clingier with each passing minute.

Then “Don’t Stop Believin’” starts playing, and Jeff groans as the guys standing near him laugh harder and catcall him like they want him to do a solo or something. “There’s no such thing as South Detroit,” Jeff yells, because it’s true, and because he knows it’s what they want from him. Sure enough, they laugh even harder, and Jeff tries to control his grin as Parse leans in, propping his chin on Jeff’s shoulder and belting the chorus in his ear. “You’re so annoying,” he says, rolling his eyes and memorizing the way Parse’s breath feels on his skin.

  


  


  


  


  


  


Two hours and three tall glasses of beer later, Jeff folds himself into the passenger seat of Parse’s car. He leans his forehead against the cool glass of the window, basking in the way he feels in moments like this -- warm, safe, happy, and really fucking in love. Normally it hurts, looking his feelings for Parse directly in the eye, but now it just feels _good_.

Parse is in a good mood, too. Not because of anything he drank, but because the bar played LL Cool J toward the end of the night and he’s secretly a sucker for old East Coast rap. “Regretting your choices yet?” Parse asks cheerfully, grinning over at Jeff with a smile that shoots straight to a spot low on Jeff’s stomach.

“Not at all,” Jeff says. He tries to sound snotty, but he can’t help laughing. “Life is so fucking good, dude.”

“Aww,” is all Parse says, and Jeff could watch him drive forever, relaxed with one hand on the wheel, half a smirk stuck on his face. It feels wrong to look at Parse this way -- Jeff knows he’s breaking the cardinal rule of teammates, has been breaking it for awhile now, but this is different. Parse isn’t like the other guys Jeff played with in high school and Juniors. He wouldn’t want to punch Jeff in the face, probably.

“Hey, Parse, can I tell you something?” Jeff blurts out. He knows he’s drunk, and that he might regret saying this later, but he feels so --

He doesn’t know how to describe how he feels when he’s around Parse. But it’s something like safe, or like he’s home, a warm sureness that goes all through him, and he wants Parse to feel that way around him too.

Parse shrugs. “Shoot.” 

“Well -- you’re gay,” Jeff mumbles. He wants to get there, he wants to say it, but he might have to work up to it a little, even with the buzz of alcohol under his skin. “That’s, uh, pretty cool.”

“Glad you think so.”

“And, yeah, that’s pretty cool,” Jeff says, staring at Parse’s hands on the wheel. “Like, I was super pumped there’s a gay guy on the team.” He tries for a goofy smile. “That’s you.”

“You done?” Parse snaps, voice sharp in warning, and Jeff is just close enough to sober that he realizes he’s doing a shitty job at this.

“Hey, hey, it’s not like -- I don’t know,” Jeff says. His stomach is churning, because apparently even getting half-drunk isn’t enough to give him the courage to come out to Parse. Maybe he should have gotten completely plastered, like he did when he told Lyle.

  


(Because that’s healthy. 

He knows it’s not. And it’s not like he routinely drinks to numb his anxiety or anything like that, but he knows it helps when he really needs it. That’s one of those things he really can never tell his parents, unless he wants his dad showing up unannounced at his front door one of these days to perform an actual intervention, throwing out all the booze or something.

He just needs it -- the alcohol security blanket, as he thinks of it -- four or five times a year. That’s not so bad, right?

Okay, five or six times.)

  


Jeff swallows and tries again. “No, really, Parse, I love that you’re gay. It makes --”

“Troy, stop,” Parse says. “Just sit there and stop talking. I’ll talk to you tomorrow when you’re sobered up and not being a huge asshole.”

“Hey, no, I’m not being an asshole,” Jeff says. “I’m not making fun of you about being gay. Like, shit, uh, I’m gay, so it’s all good.” He’s said it, he’s fucking _said_ it, so now Jeff just licks his lips and waits to see what Parse will say.

Parse is just -- gaping at him. Like he just got hit with a zamboni or something. “The fuck?”

The tension (and Parse’s confusion, to be honest -- and the assembly line of beers he drank, to be _really_ honest) is too much for Jeff, and he starts giggling to himself. He laughs so good and hard that, by the time he’s done, he has to wipe his eyes. “Christ,” he mumbles, and shakes with a few more suppressed giggles. Leave it to him to have the stupidest coming-out moment ever with the guy he likes.

Then it’s quiet. It’s a comfortable silence, Jeff thinks, or at least a thoughtful silence. Him free of a certain weight, Parse letting it settle in his own mind. They’re close to Jeff’s place, a condo he just bought over the summer because it took him that long to feel safe from a trade deal and to work up the willpower to actually move all his shit, and Jeff closes his eyes through the last few blocks.

When he feels the car come to a stop, Jeff opens his eyes. There’s his front door, and even though it feels good to finally get his secret (well, part of his secret) off his shoulders, there’s a pretty big part of him that would prefer not to make eye contact with Parse right now. It would probably be immature to just make a run for it, though, so Jeff glances to his left.

Parse is looking straight ahead, expression blank and jaw tight. And -- that’s not good. A few seconds pass, and Jeff shifts in his seat, trying to think of the right thing to say -- is Parse mad at him? Does he know that Jeff likes him? Shit, Jeff was wrong about the silence being comfortable. 

Finally, Parse takes his hands off the wheel. “We’re here.”

“Yeah,” Jeff says. Something’s definitely wrong. And he doesn’t -- he doesn’t understand it. He’d always been too chicken to tell Parse he was gay, sure, but not because he thought Parse would react badly. It had always seemed like a given that Parse would be cool with it, for obvious reasons, and now Jeff feels like he might puke all over the interior of Parse’s fancy sportscar, and he doesn’t understand _why_. “Should we…?”

“Make sure you set an alarm for tomorrow,” Parse says, still looking out at Jeff’s house. Jaw still clenched tight. “If you sleep through warmups because you’re hungover, the coaches’ll kill you.”

“Yeah,” Jeff says again. “Uh, I will.” He waits, and waits, and waits for Parse to say something else, but all Parse does is hit the unlock button on his door. The loud click of the passenger door next to him almost makes Jeff jump, and now his heart is pounding so hard he feels lightheaded. “We cool, bro?” 

It feels stupid in his mouth. It sounds even stupider in the air. Jeff wants a do-over on his whole stupid life.

“Just get out of the fucking car, man,” Parse says. It’s the voice he uses when he’s pissed off beyond reason, thick and tight with restraint -- the voice he uses when he’s one spark away from lighting up, a ticking timebomb of vicious, biting words that he’d never be able to take back. 

Normally, that voice is never directed at Jeff.

Normally, Jeff wouldn’t be stupid enough to push Kent when he’s using that voice.

“I don’t get it,” Jeff says, shaky. “Why are --”

“Jeff, get out of the _fucking_ car, I swear to God!” Parse swings around to look at him, and his eyes are almost manic with rage, his hands shaking worse than Jeff’s, breathing hard with anger.

And no one, not even Jeff, would be stupid enough to ignore Parse’s last offer of escape when he’s this angry. Wordless, Jeff stumbles out of the car and up the driveway, barely getting the car door shut behind him. He expects to hear Parse tearing away, tires squealing and everything, but Parse just sits there in his car as Jeff fumbles for the key to his front door, too angry to drive, and Jeff falls asleep on his own couch with a painful lump in his throat and a sense that he’s going to hate himself in the morning.

  


  


  


*** 

  


  


  


He wakes up, and it only takes ten seconds for Jeff to decide that he hates himself. 

His throat feels terrible, his head feels worse, and as he’s pressing an ice pack to his forehead, Jeff remembers his conversation with Kent the night before. 

Jeff doesn’t exactly have word-for-word recall of how that particular conversation went, but he remembers enough to figure out that Parse probably thought Jeff was making fun of him. That Jeff only said the words “I’m gay” when he was starting to get in trouble, like he was making it up as an excuse, or a joke, and that he’d laughed his ass off right after.

“I’m never drinking again,” Jeff mumbles into his hands, even though he knows it’s not true.

  


  


  


  


  


  


Over the next few days, Parse only talks to him as Jeff’s captain. Everything’s about hockey, practical and impersonal, and Jeff is the first one out of the locker room at the end of the day in his hurry to put some distance between them. 

The thing is, when Parse is angry, he needs space. A lot of it, and for a long time. It sucks, but Jeff isn’t going to even think about trying to make up with Parse until a few more days pass. Sure, he texts Parse an apology -- five sentences, and he’s pretty sure he spelled everything right -- but he’s letting Parse keep his distance, because that’s what he has to do. 

And the guys notice, of course. With most of them, Jeff just smiles and shrugs it off. With a few of them -- Gordo, Dressler, Ray -- he admits that he and Parse had a fight, but he won’t say anything further. 

Lyle gets it out of him, though. He doesn’t have to try hard; as soon as Lyle sits down next to Jeff, the two of them chilling at Lyle’s place with no one around to overhear, and says, “What’s going on, dude?”, Jeff practically exhales the whole story, everything spilling out of him at once. 

“You gotta work on not being so dumb,” Lyle says, but he bumps their shoulders together and doesn’t move away as they watch the World Series playoffs on TV. Neither of them even cares about baseball, but it’s relaxing, and being with Lyle is so easy that Jeff falls asleep right there.

  


(He wakes up when Lyle is moving him back onto his own side of the couch. “Keep your snuggles to yourself, man,” Lyle says, but he smiles down at Jeff, and Jeff only rolls his eyes.)

  


  


  


  


  


  


The next day, the Aces are three goals up with two minutes left of the game, and Parse is sitting next to Jeff on the bench, trying to catch his breath. 

Jeff leans over and wordlessly offers Parse his Gatorade.

“Thanks, bro,” Parse says, and this time he actually cracks a smile. It’s the first time since that car ride that Parse has looked at Jeff like that.

 _I’ll talk to him tomorrow,_ Jeff thinks. He smiles back.

  


  


  


  


  


  


But when tomorrow comes, Jeff wakes up to the sound of a Twitter notification chiming on his phone. He’s only got notifications set up for a few important people, but when he slides through the lock screen and opens Twitter, he sees that everyone’s tweeting about the same thing anyway. 

And it all originates from one new post on the Aces’ official Twitter.

 **Las Vegas Aces** @lvaces - 3m  
We’re excited to welcome Jack Zimmermann to the Aces family! Who else is excited to see #ParsonandZimmermann together on the ice again?

Jeff reads it two more times. He lets his phone fall out of his hands. “Fuck.”

  


  


  


*** 

  


  


  


Years ago, when Parse had first told Jeff he was gay, Jeff hadn’t even thought about how that might relate to Jack Zimmermann. He’d been too caught up in making sure Parse knew Jeff had his back to think about anything else.

But he remembered the rumors a few days later, and suddenly Jeff’s whole perspective shifted -- was it actually possible that not only Kent Parson, living hockey legend, was gay, but _Jack Zimmermann_ was, too? 

Jeff didn’t ask. It wasn’t any of his business. But sometimes, when he was brushing his teeth or driving to practice, he would suddenly remember that it might be true, and he would freak out just a little.

It was exciting, but it was scary. Jeff didn’t like secrets.

There was one night that really got him, though. He’d been hanging out at Parse’s house, watching movies and talking until 2 A.M., like they did sometimes, and Parse had let him crash there instead of driving back to his apartment in the middle of the night.

The normal thing to do would have been for Parse to go sleep in his own bed and leave the couch for Jeff, but they’d been talking for so long that neither of them had wanted to split up, and Parse could be a lazy shit sometimes, so Parse stayed on the couch while Jeff stretched out on the floor with pillows and a blanket.

In the end, Parse had fallen asleep literally mid-sentence, which was fucking cute, and Jeff had made himself flip over to face the other direction, because staring at Parse while he slept just felt creepy. 

He’d fallen asleep at some point, and woke up a few hours later to the sound of shallow breathing. 

Jeff sat up, and immediately heard Parse let out a pained gasp. “Kent?” he mumbled, his mouth thick and sour. “You okay?”

“I’m -- yeah,” Parse said, and even though it was just two words, Jeff could hear that Parse was shaking. 

He clenched his fingers around his blanket, not sure if he should ignore it or if he should do something. As always, taking care of Parse won out in the end. “It okay if I turn on the light?” Jeff asked, but he didn’t wait for a response before untangling himself from his blanket and clicking on a lamp.

Parse flinched away from the sudden brightness, and Jeff quickly looked him over. He was hugging his pillow close like a lover, blonde hair frizzy and sticking in every direction. It only took a second for Jeff to notice that Parse’s face was paler than usual and that his eyes looked terrified, not just irritated by the light.

“I’ll go grab hot chocolate or something,” Jeff said, mostly to give Parse some space to recover. A bad dream, probably, and while Parse wouldn’t want to admit he was upset over a dream, he wouldn’t turn down something sweet, either.

But when Jeff returned a minute later, waiting for the mug of water to heat up in the microwave (because Parse was an idiot and didn’t like his hot chocolate with milk), he was surprised to see that Parse hadn’t masked his fear yet. Parse was sitting up, hunched over with his blanket pulled up around his shoulders, and he was still shaking. 

“Hey --” Jeff started, unsure what would be appropriate in this situation.

“Sorry,” Parse said, cutting him off. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.” He looked like he wanted to say more, but his skin suddenly paled even more, almost looking like he was going to puke.

Jeff dug his toes into the carpet, trying to find solid ground. “Hey,” he repeated. “It’s okay. Are you sick? I can grab something for you if you want.”

“No, that’s --” Parse stared into space, and somehow turned even paler. He stumbled off the couch, blanket still cocooned around his upper body, and made it into the bathroom just in time to throw up in the toilet.

Jeff stepped out of the doorway, trying to give Parse some privacy. “So I guess that’s a no on the hot chocolate, then,” he called. “You shouldn’t eat or drink anything for a couple hours, right?”

The toilet flushed. Jeff could hear Parse turn on the sink, and a few seconds later heard Parse spitting. “Nah, it’s fine,” Parse finally said, reappearing in the doorway. “I’m not sick, I don’t think.”

Jeff raised his eyebrows. _But you just puked_ was implied.

Parse shrugged. “Let’s sit down or whatever. And give me that hot chocolate.”

“It’s not ready yet, dumbass,” Jeff said cautiously. “And I really don’t want you to puke it right back up. That would probably be super gross.”

Still, they settled on the couch together after Jeff took the hot water out of the microwave and stirred in the hot chocolate mix. He held the mug in his hands for safekeeping, not quite willing to let Parse drink it. 

“I’m not sick,” Parse repeated. “It’s just a bad dream.”

Jeff looked down at the mug in his hands. If it really was a bad dream, that might be worse than if Parse was sick. He wasn’t a psychologist or anything, but he knew it wasn’t a good sign if you had nightmares so bad you puked right after waking up. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Parse looked tense, still a little paler than he should have been but steadily regaining his color. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Jeff said. “Really. But if you do, I won’t tell anyone. Whatever it is.” 

“I know you won’t,” Parse said quietly.

Jeff waited. He waited some more, and then he handed Parse the hot chocolate.

Parse cautiously stretched his legs out, and Jeff shifted to let Parse hide his toes under Jeff’s thighs. When he was comfortable, Parse avoided Jeff’s eyes and cleared his throat. “You ever have a bad dream and feel like it’s still happening when you wake up?”

Jeff thought about it while Parse took a sip of the hot chocolate. “Sure.” For Jeff, it had only been dreams about being covered in spiders where he woke up and still felt them crawling on his skin, which always freaked him out, but saying that would probably cheapen whatever Parse was talking about. “Once in awhile.”

“Well. I was already not one hundred-percent part of reality when I woke up, and you sort of look like Zimms. Jack.”

It was easy to put the pieces together, at least when you paid attention. And Jeff was always paying attention. Jack Zimmermann had almost died of some kind of drug overdose when he and Parse were still tight. And Jeff had been lying on the floor when Parse woke up, almost like he’d passed out there. 

Kind of like Zimmermann had passed out, somewhere, and Jeff didn’t know if Parse had been the one to find his old best friend when he’d overdosed, but it didn’t really matter. Either way, seeing Jeff lying on the floor, features blurred in the dark and transformed by Parse’s imagination, would be a nightmare come to life.

“Shit, that sucks,” Jeff said. He was eloquent like that. “Next time that means you gotta take the floor, then.”

Parse huffed out a laugh, surprised. “Not happening, Jeff.”

There was no reason to believe it would be an appropriate question, but the moment felt unguarded, like the rules didn’t apply. “Were you and him, uh. You know.”

“Dude, you should quit the team and start working for TMZ,” Parse said. He took another gulp of his hot chocolate, then shrugged. “I don’t know. I liked _him_ , liked him a lot, but it wasn’t -- like that.”

Jeff couldn’t tell if that meant Parse used to have a secret crush on his best friend or if they’d been hooking up with one-sided feelings, but it wasn’t his business anyway. “Cool. I’ll let TMZ know.”

Parse choked on his hot chocolate, and Jeff didn’t think he’d ever forget that particular smile.

  


  


  


*** 

  


  


  


After Jeff stops freaking out -- and really, he has at least four totally separate reasons to freak out about Jack Zimmermann joining his team -- he attempts to get ready for practice, even though it’s hard to focus and he keeps refreshing Twitter to see if Parse has said anything about this.

He considers messaging Parse about it himself, but he doesn’t know what to say.

Then Jeff almost has a heart attack when his phone goes off in his hands, but it’s just Lyle calling him. “I’m outside,” Lyle says. 

“Am I supposed to know what you’re talking about?”

“Well, I’m not outside now,” Lyle amends. “More like two minutes away. But we’re carpooling today, bro. Wait for me.”

“Fine,” Jeff sighs, like he’s actually ready to go now. As soon as he hangs up, he rushes to get ready so he doesn’t look like a mess when Lyle shows up.

Lyle’s gonna want to talk to him about Zimmermann. He knows about Parse’s personal connection to Zimmermann too, maybe even more than Jeff does, because he and Parse have their own friendship that sometimes exists totally separate from Jeff, which is cool except for when they don’t invite him out for lunch. And when they have inside jokes they refuse to let him in on, whatever.

When Lyle finally does pull in -- nine minutes after he called, not two -- he gets right to the point as soon as Jeff shuts the passenger-side door. “You see the news?”

“I did, yeah.” Jeff doesn’t know if this conversation is going to be about his feelings for Parse or about team stuff. Hopefully just team stuff, because it’s too fucking early in the morning for anything personal.

Lyle drums his fingers against the wheel. “Shit, man. Do you know if they’re even talking to each other?”

Parse and Zimmermann. Jeff knows they haven’t talked for over two years, not since Parse visited Zimmermann at his old college. He hadn’t pried for any details on that particular conversation, but based on the way Parse had thrown out all his alcohol as soon as they got back to Vegas and hadn’t touched a drop since, it probably hadn’t been too good. “I don’t think they’re talking. This is gonna suck, isn’t it?”

“Hey, are you -- I mean, are _you_ gonna be okay?” Lyle asks. “You know. With their history and all.”

Jeff doesn’t know their history, and tries not to let it bother him that Lyle apparently does. He can guess, though. “Yeah, man. I’m not -- it’s not about me. I’m just worried about Parse, you know?”

Lyle exhales loudly. “Yeah. And I guess we can’t kick Zimmermann’s ass or anything now that he’s on the team, but watch out for Parse, okay? I don’t know if it’ll be a problem, but we’re the only ones who know about them, and the other guys won’t really know what to look for. We’re the ones who’ve gotta make sure he’s doing okay.”

“You know I will,” Jeff promises. And God, does it feel good to get a reminder that he’s not the only person on the team who cares -- really, really cares -- about Kent Parson’s well-being.

But when they suit up and join the rest of the team on the ice for warmups, Zimmermann’s already there. He’s leaning against the boards, Parse right beside him, and they’re having what looks to be a totally normal conversation. Parse looks comfortable, happy.

Seeing that should calm all of Jeff’s anxiety, but instead it makes his stomach sink. 

He at least has the decency to feel like shit for that.

  


  


  


*** 

  


  


  


Over the next few weeks, any lingering fears the Aces might have had about Zimmermann fitting in slowly subside. It’s mostly because of Parse; at least that’s what Jeff thinks: when Zimmermann disappears after a loss instead of talking it over with the other guys on his line, Parse assures them that obsessively going over every mistake by himself is just part of the Zimmermann hockey magic, and that he’s not mad at anybody but himself; when half the team is piled into Becker’s living room and Zimmermann is sitting ramrod straight without even a beer to help him loosen up, Parse pulls him into the conversation with an ease that makes Jeff’s shoulders stiffen with jealousy even as he laughs at Zimmermann’s weird nerd jokes.

And if anyone has any lingering doubts about Zimmermann’s place on the Aces, they can’t complain after seeing the way he skates with Parse. The coaches aren’t stupid; they put Zimmermann and Parse on the same line almost every game, and Jeff would never admit it out loud, but sometimes watching them play together is so amazing that he literally forgets to breathe. 

It’s after a particularly nasty game against the Blackhawks -- Parse and Zimmermann connecting even more than usual, the energy between them raw and crackling -- that Jeff watches from where he’s finishing the game in the penalty box as Parse crashes into Zimmermann, the final buzzer going off around them, and Zimmermann wraps Parse up in a gigantic hug, laughing as he skates backward to avoid falling.

Lyle skates up to the boards and opens the door for him, since Jeff is too busy feeling his skin burn with jealousy to, like, use his hands. When Jeff fails to actually leave the box, Lyle sighs and climbs in to sit next to him. They sit together, saying nothing and watching as Parse smiles huge up at Zimmermann, laughing at everything he says.

Finally, Lyle claps a hand on Jeff’s back. “I think it’s time to get your shit together, bro.” 

And, fuck, that’s what Jeff was afraid of.

  


  


  


***

  


  


  


Jeff waits for the opportune moment, whatever that means, but it seems like he can never get Parse alone, and when he _does_ get Parse alone, he’s too scared to do anything but joke around with him like they always do, and basically everything sucks.

They have a day off, though, and a group of the guys goes out for lunch at Arby’s, of all fucking places, and it’s when he’s walking back into the parking lot with Parse that Jeff realizes he’s never going to say what’s on his mind if he doesn’t say it now. 

Parse is walking with his keys between his teeth, trying to cram his four extra sandwiches back into their wrappings after he opened them up to make sure all the ingredients were right. He’s super fucking slow, which is actually kind of normal for Parse off the ice, so the other guys have already said goodbye (or, in Gordo’s case, “See you fuckheads later,” which amounts to the same thing) and driven off. 

“I can help you with that,” Jeff offers. “You’re gonna drop your food everywhere.”

“Nnneh, I’b godidd,” Parse mumbles around the keys in his mouth. Then, “Mudderfu--” as the takeout bag slips out of his hands.

Jeff catches it in midair before it can spill and rolls his eyes. “God, don’t choke on your keys. Here.” He hands Parse one sandwich to rewrap while he works on fixing the other one that’s still unwrapped. “You’re welcome.”

“Oh, yeah, thank you so much,” Parse says, smiling and cheerfully sarcastic after he’s done fixing the sandwich and is holding his keys like a normal person again. “What would I do without you?”

“Probably have no sandwiches,” Jeff suggests.

“I’d eat them off the ground, I don’t care.”

Jeff swallows his own reply. He could do this forever, this back-and-forth with Kent Parson, but there’s a purpose breathing down his neck and he has to see it through before he loses his nerve again. Wordless, he hands the sandwich bag over and follows Parse all the way to his car.

“What, you want a tip?” Parse asks, grinning up at him as he unlocks the driver’s side. “Or... “ He surveys Jeff, who must be looking almost as freaked out as he feels. “You okay, dude?”

He doesn’t know why he’s waited this long to say it -- it wasn’t like the team had reacted badly when Parse came out. He doesn’t know why he told Lyle before Parse, when Parse is gay himself, and he _definitely_ doesn’t know why it’s on a Sunday afternoon in an Arby’s parking lot that he finally feels ready to say it, but fuck it, Jeff’s as ready as he’ll ever be. 

“Jeff?”

“Remember when I was super annoying and drunk and said a bunch of weird shit about you being gay?”

Parse draws back just a little, already defensive again. “Yeah. You don’t need to apologize again, I got it.”

“I needed to apologize, because I really fucked that one up and shouldn’t have tried it drunk. But I was trying to tell you something.” Jeff fights off the urge to pause, to draw it out and see if Parse has figured it out, will take the pressure off. This is his to say, and he’s going to say it. “I’m gay. So, yeah.” 

He’s self-conscious, and his arms are shaking just a little, but he’s proud of the fact that his voice sounded normal. That he could actually make eye contact up until the very end. And, more than anything, Jeff feels good. 

He feels _good_ , and he never thought he’d be able to feel good right after saying the words “I’m gay,” but there’s something to be said in favor of offering yourself as you really are to the person who you want to know you completely. He knows Parse is going to see him differently -- hell, he knows Parse is looking at him differently _right now_ \-- but that’s only because Jeff never let Parse really understand him before this. 

And now Parse does understand him, or at least is getting there, and it feels so fucking good that Jeff can’t help but smile.

“Swoops,” Parse says, and Jeff can’t even begin to measure the different emotions hidden in that one word before Parse is tossing his sandwiches to the side and pulling Jeff into a hug.

It’s a friend-hug, but Jeff doesn’t mind that. He likes having friends, even when they’re standing so close that Jeff can smell their cologne and his brain goes a little blank for a second. 

“I’m so glad you told me,” Parse says as they finally break apart. “God, I fucking love you, you secretive bastard. Jesus.” And he buries his face in Jeff’s shirt for another hug while Jeff tries not to think about the other secret he’s keeping.

“Love you too, I guess,” Jeff says, patting him on the back. “Even though you have a super pointy chin, what the hell. Ouch.”

Parse lets out a “hey!” and digs his chin into Jeff’s shoulder, just to be a dick.

“This is how you welcome me to the gay club?” Jeff complains, and smiles as Parse’s laugh tickles his ear. “Come on.”

Leaning back -- but not letting go, he’s still holding onto Jeff’s shirt like it’s a lifeline -- Parse looks up at Jeff and lets out a breath. “Wow. I just -- Jeff, not to be weird or anything, but this is seriously one of the best days of my life. God.”

Jeff feels his heart racing, but he focuses on what Parse is actually saying. “Mine too, bud.”

“Yeah.” It’s no surprise when Parse falls back into the hug.

  


  


  


  


  


  


Two days later, Jeff tries to ignore the way Parse flops across the passenger seat of Jeff’s car, seat belt be damned. He tries to ignore Parse’s feet poking against Jeff’s ribs, Parse snickering like he’s in middle school.

Jeff tries to ignore how Parse’s face seems to glow when he laughs in the muted evening light, or how his easy, satisfied grin feels like it’s crawling across Jeff’s skin even when Jeff tries not to look too close.

Parse’s phone lights up, and Jeff can’t ignore the way Parse lights up too when he reads it, like this is what Parse has been waiting for all day but he’s still surprised when it comes. “Zimms says hi,” Parse says when he sees Jeff looking.

“Tell him hi for me, then,” Jeff says. He knows he’s not the one who’s meant to end up with Parse, but it still feels like a punch to the gut every time he gets the reminder.

  


  


  


  


  


  


A reminder -- Jeff drops by Parse’s place on the morning of one of their home games, a January game that’s sure to be an easy win. He’s ready to wash some of Parse’s dishes while Parse de-stresses to early 2000’s pop, but it’s Jack Zimmermann who opens the door, looking shy and awkward but still ten times happier than Jeff has ever seen him.

“JT, dude, come in!” Parse yells from behind Zimmermann. “Zimms made this fucking incredible soup, you gotta try it.”

Jeff tries it. It _is_ delicious, and he still washes up some dishes afterward, but he’s not sure if he really wants this to be the new pregame routine.

  


  


  


  


A reminder -- Jeff Skypes his mom one day in late March, and because it’s her mission in life to embarrass him by talking on the phone with Parse’s mom every week and trading gossip, she’s armed with half an hour’s worth of stories about how she’s heard Kent and Jack are clicking on the ice, and how they’re practically best friends again, and how Jack is teaching Kent how to cook, isn’t that great?

“Yeah, I’m really happy for Kent,” Jeff says, which is only half a lie. “I know he really needs this.” 

That, at least, is true.

  


  


  


*** 

  


  


  


Despite what some people think, the Aces are a group of hard-working, generally responsible men who are more serious about hockey than most people will ever be serious about _anything_. They have to be, to make it this far.

But nobody, not their team nutritionist, not even their head coach, will ever be able to stop them from their near-annual tradition of going out for 1 A.M. eats right before playoffs start. 

Lyle and Parse always pick the spot, mostly because they’re the ones with the habit of touring Vegas’s dining scene while the rest of the team keeps going to the same handful of restaurants over and over again. This time they’ve picked a Mexican spot, Pepe’s Tacos, which is a little less exciting than where they’ve taken the team in previous years, but Jeff is enjoying his fish tacos, so it’s cool. 

It’s not a team thing, really. More like a cliquey thing, as it’s just eight of them out here, and apparently Jack Zimmermann is part of their group now, because he’s chowing down on a plate of three tacos in the aisle seat across from Jeff. 

Jeff tries not to pay too much attention to the way that Parse’s and Zimmermann’s elbows are touching, propped on the table next to each other. It doesn’t have to mean something, not really, so Jeff’s not going to worry about it.

  


(Hell, Jeff’s elbow is brushing against Becker’s right now, and he sure as fuck doesn’t want Becker anywhere near his dick. It doesn’t have to mean anything.

But it means something when Parse and Zimmermann do it, he thinks. Probably.)

  


The music playing overhead isn’t too loud, so they’re all perfectly able to suffer along as Parse plays the Mamma Mia soundtrack on his phone. “Movie night for when we win the Cup, right? Right?” Parse demands, only half-joking as he points at everyone around the booth. 

“Fuck no,” Towney says way too loudly, two pina coladas deep and beaming.

“Fuck you, it’s tradition,” Parse says. “We do it after every Cup win. Do you want us to lose, Towney?”

“That’s a lie,” Lyle says, which kind of disappoints Jeff, because he’d been all set to mess with Towney, who was the only one at the table (other than Zimmermann) who hadn’t been there for the ‘12 win.

Zimmermann looks at Parse, who’s moving his shoulders to the beat of the music. “Was this movie even out for your first win?”

“Hell yeah, it came out in 2008.”

Gordo curses through his chorizo and egg burrito. “You’d better not know when that shit actually came out, Parse. No way.”

“You think I don’t know my Colin Firth movies, Gordo? You wanna fight right now? I’ll fight you, and I’ll kick your ass, and I’ll do it for Colin Firth.” 

As Lyle shakes his head -- picking at his chile verde because, as he likes to remind everyone on a monthly basis, he’s a _burrito snob_ \-- Jeff picks up his phone and starts sending Parse pictures of Colin Firth. Mostly because the other guys are boring, and because he likes seeing Parse fight back a smile every time he glances down at his phone. Likes knowing that smile is because of him, and it almost always is.

“We’d better call it a night soon, eh?” Zimmermann says eventually, and at this point Jeff figures he _has_ to be saying “eh” all the time just because he, like, gets off on everyone else making fun of him for it. They do it every time; there’s no way Zimmermann doesn’t know it’s coming.

“Old man getting a little tired, eh?” says Gordo.

“Gotta rest up so you’re ready to hog the puck all night, eh?” says Becker.

“Becker, don’t be a dick,” Dressler says. “Eh.” 

Parse steals the last bite of Zimmermann’s taco. “He just needs his beauty sleep, and who are we to stand in the way --” He cuts himself off with a snort of laughter when he sees the gif Jeff had just sent him of Colin Firth dancing in some horrific disco outfit. Probably from Mamma Mia, which Jeff has never seen and which he’d prefer to never see in the future.

As they’re filing out of the restaurant, Parse leans into Jeff’s side, and Jeff automatically puts his arm around Parse’s shoulder. “Dude,” Parse says, “wanna come over and watch Mamma Mia, like, right now?”

“Don’t do it,” Dressler warns from behind them. “It’s kind of mediocre and Parse will sing all the songs for the next twenty-four hours at _least_.”

“Fuck you, it’s not mediocre,” Parse says, indignant, while Jeff tries not to feel jealous that Dressler has seen this movie with Parse and he hasn’t.

But he still doesn’t want to watch fucking Mamma Mia. “How about I come over and we watch Ghostbusters instead?”

“It’s Mamma Mia or bust,” Parse says seriously.

Jeff grins. “See you tomorrow, then.”

“Wait, okay, we can watch your stupid movie. I’m parked over there, let’s go.”

Lyle yells after them, “Can we come too? Team bonding? Movie night?” Jeff kind of wants to throw something at Lyle right then, because he has big plans to fall asleep on Parse’s couch and wake up at five in the morning when the sun comes through the blinds, Kent Parson snoring and stretched across his legs and Kit Purrson asleep on his neck.

  


(This is a semi-regular occurrence, and it’s _fine_.)

  


“Hell no,” Parse says, before Jeff can think of a good way to say no to Lyle. “This is gonna be the first time Jeff’s ever seen Mamma Mia, and that’s one of those moments that needs to be private. Sacred.”

“I’m not watching that fucking movie, I already said,” Jeff whines, but he can feel himself smiling, his body drifting toward Parse’s as they keep walking toward his car.

“Whatever you say, Swoops,” Parse says, and Jeff knows he’s watching Mamma Mia tonight no matter what he says to the contrary.

And he can’t be too annoyed about it, not when Parse splits a huge bowl of popcorn with him on the couch, and their hands touch twice when they reach down at the same time. 

It’s not even a bad movie.

  


  


  


***

  


  


  


Jeff usually tries to keep a cool head, but he has to admit that he’s convinced this is _their_ year in the playoffs -- they have Parson and Zimmermann back on the same line, after all, and their on-ice chemistry has been sizzling.

  


(Whatever.)

  


The first round of playoffs is a breeze; the Flames go down in, well, flames, and the series is so easy that Ray gets to sit out completely, which is crucial since he’s been nursing a sore ankle for a week now.

Their second round is harder, though. They’re up against the Thorns, a three-year old expansion team from Portland that clinched the first wild card spot, then proceeded to absolutely thrash the Sharks in the first round.

And the Sharks had kind of been the favorite to make it to the Final, so Jeff’s sort of queasy now. The Thorns have what might be termed a _bad reputation_. Which is a vague way of saying that they’ll pull every dirty move they can get away with, and even the ones they can’t. And they’ve already gotten this series tied at 3-3, which is total bullshit, but Jeff tries not to focus on shitty calls too much and just focus on protecting his team from a bunch of assholes who only keep their checks legal half the time.

He tries not to worry about it, but it’s hard. Over the years since Parse came out to the team, that information has slowly leaked its way across most of the Western Conference and into certain parts of the Eastern, and while it’s normally pretty chill, there have been some shitty moments too. And there are some guys on the Thorns who’ll try to break Parse against the boards tomorrow night, because that’s just what they do. Which means it’s gonna be Jeff’s job to fuck them up right back, which means he’s probably going to drop his gloves, and it’s making him a little stressed.

  


(Not to mention that, if they don’t make it past the second round of the playoffs, all the fucking commentators on every damn sports channel, radio station, and news column will practically jerk off to the fact that Parse and Zimmermann couldn’t live up to their old, storied potential. And then Parse will get that certain way where he feels like he’s let the team down, and he’s a little humiliated and crushed but so determined to be better, as if he isn’t already the fucking best player in the NHL, and then Jeff will have to scream into his pillow every night to deal with the fact that he can’t hold Parse and kiss him whenever he’s sad. 

_Whatever.)_

  


Usually the team’s good about following their diet plans -- they have to be serious about it, if they want to win three Cups in less than ten years -- but the whole team goes out for some wonderfully greasy pizza on the night before their last game against the Thorns, because they need a break. The tables are a tacky red vinyl and Nicki Minaj is blasting too loud, and Parse won’t stop singing along to Super Bass. 

When Gordo threatens to impale Parse with his drinking straw, Parse only sings louder, until Zimmermann reaches over and almost tips him right out of his chair. “Fuck you guys,” Parse says cheerfully after he’s recovered from almost falling on his ass, “you’ll never understand me like Nicki does.”

“I thought no one understood you like Rihanna does,” Lyle says drily.

“That’s different.”

“Or like Carrie Underw--”

Parse cuts Lyle off in a hurry. “Like, Nicki and I are both from Queens, so we have a connection you’ll never understand.” He takes a huge bite of his pizza before generously sharing his middle finger with the team. 

They have eight large pizzas spread across their tables, and everyone but Zimmermann has already come to terms with the fact that Parse likes anchovies. 

“What the hell, Kenny?” Zimmermann keeps mumbling, staring at the pizza. “When did you become this person?” 

“I’m an adventurous eater,” Parse says snottily, and Lyle throws a pineapple chunk at him. It bounces off the space between his eyebrows, and Jeff practically falls over laughing with the rest of the team as Parse makes a show of wiping the juice off his face. 

Parse catches Jeff staring, and Jeff only grins wider. 

Parse tosses an anchovy at Jeff, then grins back. It’s one of his more honest smiles, Jeff thinks, and he doesn’t know if that’s down to him, Zimmermann, or just hockey.

  


  


  


  


  


  


Aces management has an emergency meeting at 4 A.M., but Jeff doesn’t know about it until he shows up at the rink at seven. 

He sees the assistant coaches huddled in a corner of the locker room, Dressler staring at Parse worriedly as Parse looks up at the ceiling and listens to whoever he’s on the phone with, cell phone tucked under his ear. The head coach isn’t anywhere in sight, but Jeff knows something huge is going on.

He doesn’t want to bother Parse when he’s on the phone, so he grabs Towney by the elbow. “What’s happening?”

Towney doesn’t look confused by Jeff’s vague question, which is really all the proof Jeff needs that something’s wrong -- Towney’s one of those guys who’s hit his head on the ice a dozen too many times. “All these guys are out sick. Lyle, Zimmermann. _Koski._ ”

“Fuck,” Jeff breathes, the one syllable feeling like it’s been punched out of his lungs. How can they be down their other star defender, their other star forward, _and_ their fucking starting goalie? “What’s -- what are we gonna do?”

 

Towney doesn’t seem to process the question, and sits down on the locker bench like it’s all finally catching up with him. Maybe a better teammate would sit down by him, try to keep him thinking positive, but Jeff gravitates toward Parse, who’s just ending his phone call.

“We’re mixing up the lines, huh?” Jeff says, sitting down by Parse and resting his hand on Parse’s knee, light and easy.

Parse looks miserable for a second, but then it’s like he remembers that he’s the captain, that it’s his job to keep everyone’s shit together, because he straightens up and meets Jeff’s eye. “We’ll make it work. You got this, Swoops?”

Jeff’s mouth feels dry. “Hell yeah, Parson.”

  


  


  


  


  


  


They lose 3-1, and it’s mostly down to holes in their defense, and Jeff wants to hide and never show his face again. They lose, and Jack Zimmermann, pale and shaky, manages to drag himself onto the ice from wherever he’d been recovering from a nasty case of food poisoning, but when he pulls up by the Aces’ bench, leans over the side, and pukes right in Ray’s lap, the coaches pull him before he can start spraying it all over the ice.

When the final buzzer sounds, Jeff checks in with Manny, the third-liner defenseman who’s filling in for Lyle and looks like he might try to drown himself in the shower, and gives their backup goalie a hug. He sees Parse tapping his stick against Towney’s, and he sees a couple guys crying on the bench.

  


(He sees each of the Thorns’ three goals slipping past him. It was his job to shut them down, to do the job for his team, and he couldn’t do it.)

  


The handshakes and media questions pass in a blur, and all Jeff really wants to do is find Parse and give him the hug he must need right now. But Jeff showers off, gets into his regular clothes, and leans against the cold lockers as the rest of the team has their own private breakdowns around him, feeling the biting metal against the back of his head and trying not to cry.

Lyle and Koski are waiting in the locker room, dressed in Aces t-shirts and gross sweatpants, and Jeff knows they’ve been alternating between puking and shitting themselves all day, but he gives them hugs too.

“I’m suing that pizza place,” Lyle mumbles against Jeff’s shoulder. “Gotta be a betting thing. No way we get food poisoning the night before _this_ game any other way.” 

“Yeah,” Jeff says, even though he’s too tired to think about it. “Love you, bro. Sorry I couldn’t do it.” 

Lyle rubs Jeff’s back once, twice, and lets go. “You all played fucking great. Wasn’t your fault.”

His pep talk is cut short when he runs off to squat over the toilet, but Jeff tries to take it to heart anyway. 

After that, things get blurry again, probably because he’s not hugging anyone, and Jeff only snaps out of it when Parse is standing in front of him, gently using his foot to scoot Jeff out of the way of Parse’s locker.

Jeff remembers that he’s sitting on the floor. “Sorry,” he says, and shifts over the rest of the way by himself. “You okay?”

“We played hard, and it sucked, but none of us have anything to feel bad about,” Parse says, and it’s in that way he sometimes has after tough losses -- slightly rushed, almost manic, like his mind and his mouth aren’t even operating on the same plane. “You played a beautiful game, Troy. The backups did great. It just wasn’t our night.”

Zimmermann, still pale but not as shaky as before, crowds in on Jeff’s other side to grab his stuff from his locker. He smells, just a little, the acidic type of smell that lingers even after a shower, and Jeff’s stomach twinges. He’d almost puked earlier when Zimmermann threw up all over Ray, and he doesn’t want to do it now.

“Next year, Jack, I promise,” Parse says, even though he’s not truly looking at Zimmermann, “we’re gonna do it. We’ll win all our games, and we’ll cater all our fucking meals, and we’ll get that Cup. You didn’t come to Vegas for this.”

Zimmermann is one of those guys who just radiates tension after a loss. Usually it’s an inwardly-directed tension, at least as far as Jeff can tell, but today he looks like he’s going to boil over. His jaw is popping out, clenched so tight he looks like he’s wearing out the enamel on his teeth, and his face is a twist of anger.

“It’s next year,” and Parse’s breathing sounds a little too shallow, probably because Zimmermann’s not answering. “I wish it was this year, I know you do too, but we can’t change anything. I don’t want to change anything. We’ll come back stronger, and we’ll figure things out so we don’t have as many injuries and we’ll have backup plans for our backup plans, and no matter what crazy shit happens, it’s ours. Next year, it's all ours.” 

“We can’t think about next year,” Zimmermann snaps. “We have to think about tonight. This fucking game. Why’d you let them take me out, Parse? I could have --”

Parse’s eyes finally focus. “You couldn’t play, Jack. I know you wanted to, but you were fucked up. If you’d stayed, you’d have passed out right on the ice. It’s okay.” 

“If I’d stayed, I could have _helped_.” Zimmermann slams his locker and walks away, staggering for a moment and grabbing onto the wall before he disappears into the bathrooms.

Parse slams his own locker, even though he isn’t done changing. “Do you ever want to punch your fucking teammates, Jeff?”

“No,” Jeff says, still sitting on the floor. He didn’t exactly dream about this moment back when he was in Juniors -- that someday he’d be in the NHL, yeah, but how fucking ridiculous that he’s collapsed on the locker room floor, looking up at two of the league’s biggest stars as they fight like it’s a normal conversation to have with Jeff plopped down in front of them. 

The fuck.

“Of course you don’t,” Parse grumbles. “Because you’re perfect.”

He doesn’t sound like he’s making fun of Jeff, almost more like he’s begrudgingly stating something he thinks is true, and Jeff can think of three goals tonight that might beg to differ with Parse’s statement, but he says nothing.

After a moment, Parse sighs. He reaches down, pulling Jeff to his feet when Jeff finally reaches up to meet his hand. “Good game, Swoops,” Parse says. “You’re the heart of this team, okay? And I saw you almost killing yourself out there, and I’m sorry we couldn’t make it happen for you. You deserved a win.”

Finally, Jeff gets his hug. And he only cries a little bit.

  


  


  


*** 

  


  


  


Jeff has shaken off his post-loss stupor, and he’s kicking off the off-season in style -- by watching a rerun of Sister Wives and trying to figure out if he could get a dog, who he could get to watch it on away games -- when he notices his phone light up.

And that’s just luck; he could have easily missed the incoming text. He’d set his phone to do not disturb on purpose, because he doesn’t need to read any fucking supportive messages tonight. 

But it’s from Parse. And he’s always okay with hearing from Parse. 

_hey i know you’re probably out w the team so you don’t need to respond right now. but wanna have a chill day in the next day or 2? lol i hate losing. fine if you can’t tho, i bet your fam wants to you fly out. anwyay peace._

Jeff feels a clench of fondness in his chest, which is really fucking unbearable when he can’t do anything about it, but he just texts back _**anyway_ because he still knows how to be a dick.

 

And he shows up at Parse’s place thirty minutes later, because he’s hopeless.

  


  


  


  


“Cool,” Parse says when he opens the door. “You want ice cream?”

That’s so fucking off of their diet plan, even during the off-season, and Jeff could never say no. “Sure. Want another hug?”

“Sure,” Parse snarks, but he folds himself into Jeff’s arms like he can’t help himself, and they stand like that for a good ten seconds before Parse eases away. “Come in, dude.”

“Yeah,” Jeff says, and it must be because he’s physically and emotionally exhausted, now more than usual, but he feels it more than he normally would, the desire to just -- kiss the soft places and hard edges of Parse’s face, slide his hands down over Parse’s hips and ass, lie down on the couch with Parse warm under him and just sleep for a week straight. 

Parse hands him a bowl of butter pecan ice cream. God, Jeff doesn’t want to feel weird about the fact that Parse keeps Jeff’s favorite flavor on hand even though Parse doesn’t even like it himself, but it’s hard not to. “Thanks, bro,” he says quietly.

They stretch out on the couch, a weirder-than-normal episode of The Bachelorette playing in the background, and Jeff tries to pretend he’s watching the show when he’s really keeping track of Parse in his peripheral vision. 

Parse is just eating his ice cream and watching the show with a dull, empty expression -- which is to say, he’s perfect and Jeff still wants to hold him. He wants to know if he’d be capable of really taking Parse’s mind off the loss, if he tried it the way he’s almost too scared to let himself imagine.

  


(Well, The Bachelorette’s clearly not doing the job. Sue him.)

  


“None of these assholes deserve her,” Parse mumbles, and Jeff hasn’t been paying attention, but he laughs anyway. He hadn’t known what to expect when he came over, but he’s glad they’re not talking about the game. 

“You still have those shitty beers somewhere in your fridge?” He knows Parse doesn’t drink, but Gordo had left them here after a party and he’s willing to take them off Parse’s hands. It’s been a shitty day, which is understating things, and Jeff doesn’t particularly want to be stone-cold sober anymore.

“Nah, they were taking up too much space. I put them in the fourth closet ‘cause I’m classy like that. If you want one, go ahead, but it’ll be warm.”

Jeff grins and wanders off to figure out which closet, exactly, Parse considers his _fourth_ one. When he finally finds it, he grabs two beers -- one for him, and another one for him -- and cracks one open, slowly walking back to the living room. 

“You’re staying here tonight?” Parse asks. 

It takes a second, but Jeff eventually feels the chirp land. “Hey, fuck you, I can drive after two. Just gotta pace myself.”

“Uh-huh.”

He settles back in next to Parse, and feels his face get warm when Parse drapes his legs over Jeff’s lap. The most horrific group date of all time is playing out on the TV in front of them, and Parse is laughing, and Jeff just wants to reach down and rub his thumb over Parse’s knee, so he chugs half his beer in one go instead.

“What happened to pacing yourself,” Parse yawns, a thin string of saliva flashing at Jeff before Parse shuts his mouth again. “Dumbass.” 

Jeff shrugs and takes another sip, just because. He thinks about what Lyle would say if he could see them right now, and he thinks about the fact that they’re headed into four months of offseason, four months where they won’t have to be professionals. Hell, they won’t even have to see each other, if Jeff happens to do something tonight that really fucks with their energy. 

He thinks about what it means that they’re out to each other, and they’re always cuddling like this, but nothing else has happened. Nothing more.

The beer really does taste like shit, but Jeff finishes it quickly.

“Is this weird to you?” he asks.

“What?” Parse says. “The Bachelorette? Yeah, but that’s why it’s awesome.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Jeff says, voice hoarse, even though the smart thing to do is just agree and move on. “I meant -- this.” 

Somehow, Parse gets it this time. “No, I love this,” he says, like he thinks Jeff is having a super belated gay panic or something. “It’s not weird.” 

“I just --” This time Jeff does manage to stop himself, but it doesn’t feel good. He shrugs, looking down at Parse’s feet, and he feels the unsaid words eating at his stomach. 

He feels Parse’s hand touch his shoulder. “Hey,” Parse says, voice soft. “What’s up?” 

Jeff’s fingers itch for the second can of beer, but he doesn’t want to make Parse move. “Um,” he says. “You sure you want to hear this?”

Parse must hear something in Jeff’s voice, because he pulls his legs off of Jeff’s lap and sits back, wary and serious. “Yeah. Say it.”

That’s what Jeff was supposed to do months ago, and Lyle would flick him on the back of the head if he were here to see what a coward he is, but Jeff can only manage to shake his head. 

“Just -- say it, whatever it is,” Parse says. “Please.” 

Jeff freezes, and freezes, but he can’t think of anything he can say, so he just says the truth, even though he feels like he’s observing himself from another room. “I have feelings for you,” Jeff says, and doesn’t let himself panic, because this is something he can never take back, and he needs to just commit to it. “I have for a long time. I don’t want this to -- I’m cool being friends, but if you want to know what I’m thinking, that’s it.” 

“Like sexual feelings?” Parse says, and there is no tone in his voice. Jeff can’t read it.

He doesn’t know how to answer, either. On one hand -- of course. He’s imagined fucking Parse so many times, how it would feel, how Parse would look, how Parse would sound. But they’re just flashes, and Jeff always stamps them down before they can go anywhere.

Well -- almost always. He allows himself a drawn out fantasy every once in awhile, even as he regrets it afterward. Because that’s the thing: he’s always kept his mind carefully blank of sexual thoughts when it comes to his teammates, always felt gross and wrong if he slipped up, and things are different since he knows that Parse is gay, too, but some habits are hard to break.

“Yeah, duh,” is all Jeff says, though. “But not like -- not like I just want to sleep with you, god. I care about you.” He’s becoming more aware of the reality of the conversation. He wishes he could go back to a minute ago, when it felt a little like an out-of-body experience. That wasn’t quite as scary.

“Like -- you want to date me?” Parse clarifies, and Jeff thinks he might sound incredulous. Or just upset. Fuck.

“Uh, maybe. Yeah. But I said I’m good with being friends, remember?” 

“So how do you feel about me?”

  


(And Parse has always been stubborn, ruthless in his quest to get everything lined up, to understand everything, but god. Jeff feels like the truth is being wrung out of him Inquisition-style.

He doesn’t know why he says it, other than the fact that it’s true. Which isn’t always a good enough reason, Jeff _knows_ that --)

  


“I love you.” 

Jeff feels like he probably fucked up, but his skin is tingling and his whole body feels like a weight has been lifted off of it, so he can’t quite regret it yet. He’s been hiding this for years -- fucking _years_ , how did he even manage it -- and it’s going to change everything now that he’s said it, but Jeff has always hated lying, especially to Parse.

Parse, who looks like he just got the breath knocked out of him. Pale, overwhelmed, scared. The moment after _I love you_ crawls by, and still Parse doesn’t say anything, just worries his hands across his blanket, and heaves with shallow breaths.

“Do you want me to -- should I leave for now?” Jeff asks. “So you can -- I don’t know. But I can head out if you need some space.”

Parse nods.

He has to do what Parse needs, always, so Jeff gets up and puts his shoes back on, grabs his keys. “Sorry, I know I fucked things up,” he says, which is probably the wrong thing to say. He doesn’t know if there’s any right thing to say in this moment, though. 

Parse just stares at him, wide-eyed like a child and still clutching his old blanket. “I don’t -- I’m sorry. I don’t know.” 

Jeff leaves, then, even though it’s physically painful to leave Parse when he’s this upset. _Well,_ Jeff thinks wryly, moments before his own anxiety can wash over him, _at least I waited for the offseason._

  


  


  


*** 

  


  


  


He’s lying facedown on his own bed, wondering why he can’t even be bothered to feel upset when he fell out of the playoffs _and_ got rejected by Parse in the same day -- it’s probably because it’s too much all at once; it’s probably a defense mechanism, but he shouldn’t think too hard about that -- when his phone chimes at him.

Jeff blinks down at it. Waits for his vision to refocus.

 **Gordo:** ARE YOU FUCKIGN SEEING THIS????

There’s a link. 

Jeff clicks it.

The headline says it all: _”Aces Food Poisoning Tied to Portland Thorns Staffers."_

  


  


“Shit,” Jeff mumbles, and he calls his mom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, this is the first time I've published a story before I actually finish writing it?? things should be slowing down for me over the next week or so, though, so I should be finishing this up soon.
> 
> also, i apologize retroactively that I spent a lot of time editing/revising the beginning, but barely any time on the end of this section. Life got #hard and I needed to just get this published already.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's been almost a month since i published ch. 1, so here's a quick summary -- jeff loves parse, and his friend lyle knows. jeff finally tells parse he's gay but doesn't mention the whole love thing, and then they fall out of the playoffs and jeff finally confesses his feelings but parse just seems freaked out, and then they find out that the team that beat them had cheated to win. aaaand that's what you missed on glee.
> 
> reminder that i still don't know what hockey even is

The head coach had promised to send an email out to the whole team as soon as the meetings and phone calls are finished and they actually know what’s going to happen, but Jeff still wants to be there. Not that players are invited to these types of meetings.

Well, maybe Parse is invited, since he’s the captain. Jeff wouldn’t know, though, and he’s too nervous to text Parse to see if he has, like, insider information. 

Instead, Jeff turns to the Internet, where leeches with grainy phone cams and C-list “reporters” with questionable sources are doing their best to keep the story buzzing despite the lack of any new information. 

Apparently, someone at the diner they’d eaten at had found a decent enough check from a national news outlet that they’d been willing to settle for just the first half of whatever the Thorns staff had promised them in exchange for the food poisoning, and had spilled everything.

Apparently, there’s a cloud of lawyers currently at work in the Aces offices, and the representative from the NHL board of governors is not yet ready to share what consequences the Thorns will face. 

Apparently, the President is tweeting about this already.

Jeff groans and turns his phone upside-down. The sooner this is all over, the better.

  


  


He gets an email two hours later, and he puts on his suit and drives back to the rink.

It’s not even five A.M. yet, but that’s the least of Jeff’s problems.

  


  


The team is corralled around a long table, and Jeff rolls his eyes when Towney starts spinning around in his chair. Jeff scoots closer to Lyle, who’s looking grouchy and tired, especially under the harsh overhead light, and says, “Feeling better?”

“Mostly,” Lyle says. The food poisoning has probably left his system by now, but he still seems a little grayer than usual. He gives Jeff a small smile anyway. 

Jeff very carefully does not look at Parse. The avoidance seems to be mutual, and it sucks, but Jeff’s going to wait until this mess is figured out before he lets himself worry about what’s going on with Parse, or about the ways that telling Parse about his feelings might change their friendship.

“Okay,” Coach says, once he’s hung up his phone. “They’re talking to the press in just a couple minutes. But we wanted to make sure you all heard the news from us first. The fine print can wait till later, but here’s the big stuff: the Thorns are out. The cheating reached too high for it to be called a rematch, so they’re done for the playoffs. Some big hiring changes coming their way for next year, that’s for sure. We’re not guaranteed their spot, though. We get three days to recover and re-strategize, and then we’re playing the Sharks to see who moves forward. Now I gotta go stand behind Emily while she talks to the press and try to look like I know what’s going on. Parser, get them straightened out.” 

As Parse seamlessly takes over, talking the guys through the media questions they’ll probably get asked and what answers they should give, Jeff breathes as the last of his nervousness leaves his system, and he finally lets himself get excited.

The Aces are back. They’re going to demolish the Sharks, and then whichever two teams after that who try to stand between Vegas and the Cup are going _down._ They’ve got the best damn player in the league, and they’ve got the famous no-look-one-timer, and their defense is pretty fucking good, in Jeff’s humble opinion.

The Aces are back, and they’re gonna win it all.

He feels himself grinning, bouncing a little in his seat, and Lyle grins back, nudging their elbows together. 

Parse catches his eye from across the table, and his smile is quick and almost as big as Jeff’s.

Almost.

  


  


  


  


Some commentators -- the loud-mouthed ones, especially -- think it’s bullshit that the Sharks get a second chance even though there was no evidence of cheating in their series against Portland, and Jeff would agree if not for the fact that the Aces get a shutout in their very first game back, so it’s cool.

He already knows how much money the NHL’s making in extra ticket sales, too, and that it’s impossible to prove whether or not the Thorns had beaten the Sharks earlier by cheating and just didn’t get caught, so he wouldn’t complain anyway -- but winning feels good. 

The fact that Lyle got two assists after he had to sit out their last game feels pretty good, too. 

“Mmm,” Lyle says, waving off Dressler’s offer of another beer. They’re back in their favorite bar, now that they’ve experienced concrete proof that all other places _suck_. “No more. My limit has been hit.”

“Whatever, Brandon.” Gordo shakes his head. “You only let, like, two of us buy you a drink. This is the worst celebration ever.”

Lyle shrugs and takes a handful of onion rings off Gordo’s plate. “We’ve got another game tomorrow, dumbass. You’re acting like we already…” He trails off, clearly not wanting to jinx anything. “I’m not showing up tomorrow hungover. And if I see anyone drinking enough to get that way, I’m knocking that booze straight out of their hand.” He gives Jeff a meaningful glance.

“Hey!” Jeff gives Lyle his best _who, me?_ look. “I’ve been working on this --” he gestures at the glass in front of him -- “for, like, half an hour, what the fuck?”

“Yeah, whatever. I’m keeping my eye on you.” 

Jeff rolls his eyes good-naturedly, and a few minutes later he almost gets knocked out of his seat when a KISS song starts playing and Lyle, Dressler, and Gordo push their way out of the booth so they can dance.

  


(Dancing, in this case, meaning they jump up and down on the dance floor, shouting the lyrics and grabbing onto each other for balance. “Rock and Roll All Nite” is probably not the best song for dancing, Jeff thinks from the safety of his seat, and he laughs at them even as he sees people filming their terrible dancing.)

  


That’s not really what Jeff’s in the mood for, so he finds Parse and Zimmermann, who are leaning back in their own booth, not talking much as they sip their ice waters and watch their teammates make fools of themselves.

“‘Sup,” Jeff says quietly, sliding into the seat across from them. “How much longer till you kick everyone out for the night, Parse?” Celebrating their first win back in the playoffs felt necessary, sure, but he knows Parse must be thinking about how much rest everyone should be getting tonight. 

“What do you think, Zimms? Can you stay awake much longer?” Parse asks, and Jeff knows there’s a longstanding joke about Zimmermann being an early-to-bed type, but he still feels a burn of jealousy at the easiness between the two of them. He has no right to be jealous, but there it is.

Zimmermann shrugs and continues to watch the others dance, a smile slowly spreading across his face as Dressler honest-to-god breaks out the scuba dive move. “Fifteen more minutes.” 

“Dancing is exercise,” Jeff points out, looking at Parse.

Parse grins back. “Twenty more minutes, then.”

“Hey, you’re the captain,” Zimmermann says, nudging Parse a little with his elbow. “It’s your call.”

Jeff tries not to stare at where they’d touched. Makes eye contact with Parse again instead. “Yeah. Good game today, Cap. Made the rest of us look dusty, as always.” 

As Parse’s cheeks turn pink -- and _wow_ , is all Jeff can think -- Zimmermann nudges Parse again. “There’s one thing he never needs to hear. I think his head’s big enough already, eh?” 

Well -- Jeff’s been Parse’s teammate longer than Zimmermann ever has, no matter how much the media likes to talk about their time in Juniors together, and Jeff feels pretty confident that Parse _does_ need to hear that he played a good game. Jeff’s left the rink after a loss enough times only to see Parse sitting in the driver’s seat of his own car, running the game over in his mind and blaming himself for every small mistake until Jeff taps on the glass and gets him out of his head -- it’s happened enough that Jeff knows Parse will wonder if he could have helped the team more unless someone tells him how he did, even after a win.

“Right, Parse, twenty more minutes,” is all he says, though, “and then you’re gonna do it all over again tomorrow. We’ve got this.”

Parse smiles at him around the drinking straw in his mouth, and _there’s_ the person Jeff is stuck being in love with -- everything in his smile confident, cheeky; something in his eyes quieter, shyer. But surprisingly direct, and Jeff thinks he feels something click into place between them, even if he’s not sure what, even if it’s just for a moment.

And then Parse looks down, flushing again, and Jeff has to share him with Zimmermann for the next twenty minutes. He might have been imagining what he thought he saw in Parse’s eyes -- he’s known for imagining things, for hoping too much -- but he’s not imagining that Parse smiles at him more than he smiles at Zimmermann the rest of the night.

  


  


(That’s just a fact. You can’t argue with numbers.)

  


  


  


  


They keep winning. And the good thing about winning is that they make it through the next round, and they’re about to be playing for the Stanley Cup again. But the bad thing about winning is Jeff’s about to play for the fucking Stanley Cup, and he’s not sure _how_ he’ll manage to mess up, but he’s got a bad feeling that he’s going to somehow let the team down.

Also, Zimmermann’s having his pregame freakout in the empty office where Jeff usually has _his_ pregame freakout, which is kind of inconvenient because now Jeff is wedged into a utility closet, face buried in his hands and just trying to breathe, trying to visualize himself succeeding instead of every other terrible thing he’s imagining. 

“That was super awkward,” Lyle whispers some time later, and Jeff really doesn’t know how long he’s been huddled in here trying to hold it together, but Lyle is squeezing in beside him. “I looked for you in the normal place. Zimmermann wasn’t thrilled to see me.” 

Jeff almost laughs when he pictures that, but he’s too busy shaking. 

A moment later, Lyle moves Jeff over a bit so he can sit down next to him. Slowly -- feeling Lyle’s shoulder against his, watching Lyle play some stupid game on his phone -- Jeff relaxes. 

“Hey, you don’t have to be so stressed about the game, you know,” he says to Lyle, once he trusts his voice not to shake and is ready to try for a little humor. “You’re gonna do fine.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Lyle says, and he dies in his phone game.

  


  


  


  


It happens like this.

  


  


Boston crushes them in the very first game of the Finals. Jeff doesn’t know if he’s ever played a worse game, and that includes when he was a teenager trying to impress his high school coach. Nothing is clicking, and the media storm after the game is so tense he’s a little surprised no one actually screams at a reporter.

  


They play some of the prettiest hockey the world’s ever seen for Game 2. They lose anyway. Jeff doesn’t sleep well that night.

  


The Aces’ arena is packed for their first home game of the Finals. When he glances around the stands, Jeff can’t see anyone holding a sign for him, but he sees #90 jerseys _everywhere_ , and it makes him smile.

  


And they win.

  


They win Game 3, and Game 4, and they somehow win Game 5 even though the Bruins outplayed them every step of the way, and they come back to Vegas for Game 6 with the standings 3-2 in their favor.

  


Parse gives them a decent pep talk, and Zimmermann has his game face on, and Lyle bumps their shoulders together as they skate out, and Jeff is in position to win the second Stanley Cup of his career, somehow.

  


  


  


It goes like this.

  


  


  


Parse and Zimmermann pull off a no-look-one-timer in the third minute of the game, and it’s so classic that Jeff feels like he might as well be watching game tape from 2009. The crowd is screaming so loud that he can barely focus on Parse’s huge smile as Zimmermann pulls him in for a hug.

  


Towney spends way too much time in the penalty box, but he’s smiling through the blood in his mouth, vicious and wild. _So much for a clean game,_ Jeff thinks, but he also kind of loves this dumb bruiser from Toledo.

  


Lyle pulls off some fucking _satisfying_ checks that get the whole crowd roaring. And he doesn’t spend a single minute in the penalty box, and Jeff’s never been prouder of him.

  


  


Jeff, truth be told, doesn’t have many moments for the highlight reels. 

He just has one -- and that’s when he gives Parse the assist on what turns out to be the game-winning goal.

  


(And if that’s the only time his name’s going to be mentioned tonight, he is fucking _fine_ with that.)

  


When the clock runs out and the score is 3-2, the crowd is making so much noise that it feels like the sound itself is propelling him forward as Jeff exits the bench to get to his team. Lyle grabs him, pulls his helmet off to ruffle his hair -- Becker is screaming something in Jeff’s ear, he doesn’t know what -- and Jeff might be crying, just a little. 

Parse skates up to him, and they haven’t really touched -- or talked -- much since Jeff’s confession all those weeks ago, but that doesn’t matter when Jeff opens his arms and Parse spills into him, short enough that his sweaty blonde hair almost gets caught in Jeff’s mouth. Jeff holds on tight, and as far as hugs go, it’s more fierce than tender, thirty seconds where Jeff can just think _you’re here, you’re here_.

When Parse finally lets go, Jeff can’t do anything but squeeze his biceps one last time, can barely take in the look on Parse’s face before he gets pulled away to celebrate with the others.

Jeff touches the Stanley Cup again, and he cries.

  


  


  


  


A thousand hugs later, he sees Parse and Zimmermann lifting the Cup together, and he’s never seen Jack Zimmermann smiling that big. It’s a good look on him.

Jeff sags against Lyle, who’s strong enough to hold him up and tolerant enough to put up with it, and watches Parse and Zimmermann hug, and hug, and not let go. An ache of jealous wanting prickles under his skin, of course, but below that -- deeper, in Jeff’s bones -- lives years and years of seeing Parse flinch at the sound of Zimmermann’s name, of Parse checking his phone on his birthday and frowning when he thinks no one’s watching, of Parse withdrawing from the rest of the team every time they played against Providence. 

And now, here, Parse is happy, and Jeff is happy -- he’s happy for Parse, he really is -- to know that things are changing for him. 

He turns to see Lyle watching him. “Chin up, Swoops,” Lyle says. “We won.”

  


  


  


*** 

  


  


  


It takes hours to leave, after, but they free themselves of the media eventually, and soon Parse is groaning as “Ace of Spades” plays overhead for the last time all season. “I scored the goal,” he yells over the noise, “I scored the _goal_ , I shouldn’t have to put up with this shit.” 

“Ego!” yells Jamie, their baby rookie who is now totally sloshed. “Guys, he had an ego.”

They’d agreed, mostly as a joke because of the way the media vigilantly looks for excuses to call Parse an asshole, that anytime they catch him having a big ego during playoffs, he owes the whole team a round of drinks. This was the second time he’d been busted, although Jeff had thought the first one had been a joke and didn’t really qualify.

“Fine, yeah,” Parse says now, and he gets up to go talk to the bartender as the rest of them yell friendly abuse at him. Gordo throws a napkin. 

Jeff, to be honest, isn’t that far behind Jamie in terms of getting completely shitfaced, and he watches Parse as he talks to the bartender, as he leans over to gesture toward the sound system. Parse glances back, catches his eye, and grins. 

Jeff knows his answering grin is too big, but fuck it, he’s drunk and he just won the Stanley Cup, and Kent Parson is smiling at him from across the room. It’s a lot to handle. 

The song stops playing midway through, because Parse always gets what he wants, and Jeff practically flips his chair in excitement when the first notes of “Don’t Stop Believin’” begin.

The whole bar is yelling the lyrics in time, but none of these fuckers are from Michigan, which means it’s Jeff’s job to throw his arms up in the air and scream, “Born and raised in South Detroit!” when the moment calls for it.

“Oh, yeah, _now_ you don’t care if South Detroit exists,” Towney yells, and Jeff can actually feel his heart speeding up as Parse slides into the chair next to him, smiling up at him like Jeff’s done something right. 

He should probably slow down his drinking for the night, he knows, if the way he can’t think about anything besides how good it would be to touch Parse’s face and make out with him here in the middle of the bar is any indication. 

Jeff closes his eyes and tries to clear his head, lets the song distract him for a moment. “Want the rest of my beer?” he asks, even though Parse doesn’t drink.

“Sure,” Parse says after a pause, which Jeff thinks is a good thing. Anything Parse does right now is a good thing, probably, and Jeff’s eyes trail over the lean muscles of Parse’s shoulders and chest, just visible under his button-up, as Parse drains the last of the beer. “Mostly backwash, dude. I wasn’t expecting my first drink after all that time to be so shitty.” Parse raises his eyebrows, and it’s teasing, challenging. “Buy me something better.” 

Jeff rolls his eyes, trying to not completely give away how much it affects him when Parse looks at him like that, but he goes to order something anyway -- and he has no idea what Parse likes to drink, now that it’s been four years since he stopped, but Jeff orders a pina colada just to see the look on his face. 

Parse laughs when he sees it, which warms up every inch of Jeff’s six-foot-three body, and takes a long sip. “Cheers, bitches,” Parse says when he comes up for air, and Jeff had forgotten that the other guys are right there, laughing at Parse’s drink and laughing at the fact that he’s drinking again.

As some of the guys shove around, trying to get a word in with Parse, Jeff manages to hang onto his spot next to him, and Parse doesn’t leave. He gets up, briefly, when Zimmermann says goodbye to everyone at midnight, and Jeff stops himself from ordering another drink even after watching them hug it out for just a little too long.

“Where’s he going?” Jeff asks when Parse sits back down.

“Gotta Skype his people,” Parse shrugs, and slurps at the last dregs of his pina colada. “What about you? I thought you’d be on the phone with your mom and dad by now.”

Jeff shrugs. “I called them earlier. And I’m flying up there in a couple days. It’s cool.” 

He does try to slow it down on the beers, he does, but an hour later he’s not any closer to sobering up, squeezed into a booth with Parse, Lyle, Gordo, and Dressler. He’s also -- hypocritically, he knows -- worried about the fact that Parse is working on his second pina colada, which Parse actually ordered himself this time.

“Dude, you’re not really gonna get drunk off _that_ tonight,” Lyle says, sounding pained. “That’s too basic, even for you.”

“I am not basic!” Parse says, indignant, way too loud, and definitely well on his way to getting drunk off two pina coladas. 

Jeff starts grinning. “Sure you are. You’re the _most_ basic.” 

“Swoops, no,” Parse whines. “Why you gotta be so mean?”

“Quoting Taylor Swift songs is literally the definition of basic,” Lyle says, and Jeff grabs Parse’s drink while he’s distracted. 

“Hey, what the fuck,” Parse says. “Where’d my -- Jeffrey. Jeffrey. Why?”

Jeff catches Gordo’s eye and starts laughing, even before he can get the joke out. “Because you’re a basic, average girl.” He waits until he sees the other three catch on, Parse starting to scowl at him. “And you’re here to save the world.”

“Fuck you, Jeff, you promised, like, two years ago not to do that anymore!”

“Aw, KP, what’s the sitch?” Gordo says, and everyone falls over laughing while Parse groans dramatically. “You need someone to touch your naked mole rat?”

  


(Parse’s eyes meet Jeff’s for half a second. It doesn’t mean anything. Jeff might die.)

  


“Ew,” is all Lyle says, like he’s disappointed in Gordo, even though that’s pretty much what they’ve come to expect from Gordo at this point.

Dressler is almost too drunk to participate in the conversation, but he manages a quick “Doo-doo-doo-doo” to the tune of the Kim Possible ringtone.

Parse shakes his head, pretending to be annoyed even though Jeff can see his smile. “Fine. Two can play this game, Troy.” And he gets up and leaves. 

They watch him approach the bar, watch him talk again with the woman in charge of the music. “He’s gonna play High School Musical,” Gordo says. “Just wait.”

“Nooooo,” Jeff groans, already turning red in advance. He _just_ got the team to stop playing the first song from High School Musical 3, the one where Gabriela stands up and sings his name for, like, ten seconds straight. It was a long, hard battle, and now Parse is ruining his victory, and he can barely feel mad about it.

Lyle, sitting across from him now that Parse left more space, bumps their feet under the table. “Like you don’t deserve it. Now that the KP thing is back, everyone’s gonna call him that for months.”

“Like people won’t be calling me Troy Bolton for months,” Jeff says glumly. Parse is returning, smug all over, and the woman behind the counter is searching up a song on her phone.

“I’ll probably call you Zefron, if that makes you feel any better,” Gordo offers.

Jeff watches as Lyle scoots back over to give Parse room to sit down. “How about we finish this like men?” he says, and Parse gives him a questioning look. “Next Halloween, you dress up like Kim Possible. I’ll be Troy Bolton. Settle things once and for all.”

Parse grins as the music starts. “I’ll pass.” 

“ _Fuck_ ,” is all Jeff can get out, and then it seems like every hockey player in the room converges on their table, everyone bent on embarrassing Jeff tonight.

“ _Boy toy named Troy used to live in Detroit_ ,” Parse (and, like, fifteen other people) shout at him, and Jeff gives Parse his pina colada back before putting his head down on the table.

“I hate this song,” he mumbles, even though no one can hear him. He waits until the first verse -- the Troy verse -- of “Anaconda” is done before sitting up again, and he knows his face is still red. 

Parse is just grinning at him. “I win.”

“Yeah, you do,” Jeff says. “Now everyone’s gonna keep asking me--”

He’s cut off when Towney and Becker stumble against the side of their table, making Jeff’s beer jump. “Troy!” Becker yells. “Does your anaconda want some of this?” He slaps his ass.

Jeff puts his head down again.

  


  


  


Later, when some of the real partiers on the team have left to do things Jeff would rather not think about, the bar is quieter and he’s not really that drunk anymore. 

He can pretend he’s a little more intoxicated than he actually is, though, especially now that Parse has migrated over to Jeff’s side of the table and is cuddled up against him. Jeff is slightly alarmed to discover that when Parse is drunk -- and, unfortunately, Parse is _drunk_ \-- he turns into, like, some kind of pigeon creature? At least, Jeff thinks it’s pigeons who steal shiny things, and Parse has been grabbing at Jeff’s watch for the past five minutes.

  


(Jeff would just let Parse take it, but the truth is he’s pulling away because he likes how it feels when Parse’s fingers trail over his wrist, and he doesn’t want it to stop.

He’s _pathetic._ )

  


Lyle is caught up in some conversation with Gordo, but when he catches Jeff’s eye, glancing at Parse’s hand on Jeff’s wrist, he shakes his head in resigned amusement.

Jeff blushes and tries to look like he has no idea what Lyle’s looking at him like that for, even as Parse’s fingers move down, start tracing the palm of his hand.

“What are your plans for tomorrow, Parse?” Lyle asks, and he looks like he’s trying to hold back a laugh when it takes Parse a solid eight seconds to realize someone’s talking to him. “Sleeping off your first hangover in, what, four years? Partying some more?”

Parse lets go of Jeff’s hand, but his side is still pressed up against him, warm and solid. “Uh, no. I’m gonna go hang with the Zimmerfam, you know. Catch up with my old buds Bob and Alicia.”

“Aw, that sounds good,” Lyle says.

“Yeah,” Parse says, and leans his head on Jeff’s shoulder. “I love them so much. Plus I’ll see Jack for, like, a hundred hours. Every day.”

Jeff pretends he’s really interested in taking a drink of Lyle’s cider. 

“How long are you staying with them?” Gordo asks, almost hungry. He’s probably more obsessed with Bad Bob than anyone Jeff’s ever met, which is saying something. 

Parse shrugs, his shoulder bumping Jeff’s arm. “I dunno. A couple weeks? They love me, they’ll let me stay whenever.” 

“Sick. I wish Bad Bob would let me stay whenever. Tell him I love him.”

“He loves me,” Parse repeats, sleepy and a little sing-song. “I’m, like, part of the family. The Zimmerfamily.” 

Lyle glances around. “I think that’s our cue to start heading out. You can’t win the Cup and then fall asleep on a bar table, bro, you’re the captain.” As they clean up the table, tip the staff -- and yeah, it’s a fucking huge tip -- and get Dressler on his feet, Jeff tries to avoid Lyle’s eyes. 

It doesn’t work. 

“Hey,” Lyle says after they’ve managed to load Dressler and Parse into the back of a cab. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Jeff says. It’s true, and it’s a lie. “We won the fucking Stanley Cup, man. I’m great.” 

Lyle bumps their shoulders together, and the fact that he weighs more than Jeff paired with Jeff’s alcohol intake that night almost makes him fall over. “Dude,” Lyle laughs, steadying Jeff with one hand, “you want to go out with the guys tomorrow? We’re hitting up the casinos for once. It’s gonna be the worst.”

“Nah,” Jeff says. He glances over at where Parse is curled up in the cab, leaning against Dressler. “I’m going home.”

  


  


  


*** 

  


  


  


Home, for Jeff, isn’t really Detroit. He’s from a suburb twenty minutes northwest of the city, the type of place where people complain about how “ghetto” Detroit is when they’re still in Michigan, then tell people from out-of-state that they’re from Detroit when asked. 

It’s not the right place for Jeff anymore, which is part of the reason he likes flying his parents out to games around the country instead of visiting much. But they’ll be here forever, or at least until they retire -- both work at Chrysler, of course, and the only thing more cliched than that is the case of Vernors in the fridge. 

“Ew,” Jeff says, shutting the refrigerator door. “ _Mo-o-om,_ why do you always buy that stuff? Can’t we just get Coke or something?”

“You’re twenty-six,” she says, “buy your own drinks if you want them. Whiner.”

He likes being home, though. He hangs out for the first afternoon just watching Netflix with his younger sisters, a pair of twins who came as what his parents call a “delightful surprise” ten years after he was born. And when he’s sick of watching Gilmore Girls -- which, to be fair, takes two and a half seasons -- he lets his parents drag him into the city for some Greek food, while his sisters put on their most innocent, trustworthy faces and say they have too much homework to come along.

They’re probably finishing season 3 without him. Assholes. 

“You let them get away with so much stuff that I didn’t,” Jeff says as he’s waiting for his pastisio. “What happened to ‘dinner time is family time’?”

“We just like you better,” his dad jokes, which is really his way of saying that they trust the girls more than they trusted him when he was their age. Jeff would think that’s unfair, but he remembers when he was away from his family, playing Juniors in Windsor, and -- yeah, he deserves that.

His mom is on her phone, which is funny, considering that she never lets him have his phone out at the table. “Jeff, did you know that you had more penalties in your last few games than you did in the whole first and second playoff rounds put together?”

“Um,” Jeff says, “yes? The refs were a lot stricter, though, so it wasn’t like --”

“Oh, we liked your penalties,” his dad says. “Much better than your first season.”

They don’t talk about that, ever, and Jeff is relieved when their food arrives. “It ended a lot better than the first season, too.”

“You can say that again,” his dad says. “You’ve heard this a hundred times, but we’re still so proud of you.”

“Yeah, everyone here was so happy when you won,” the waitress says as she arranges their plates, and Jeff _would_ turn bright red and shrug it off, but his parents would probably scold him for a week straight if he did that, so Jeff manages to thank her like a mature, professional adult.

“It’s too bad your sisters had so much homework,” his mom says when they’re alone again. “They would have gotten a real kick out of that.”

“You’re famous around here,” his dad says, and Jeff covers his face with his hands.

  


  


  


  


  


  


Jeff eats, sleeps, hangs out with his sisters, goes to the gym, hangs out with the one high school friend he’s managed to keep in touch with, goes to the gym some more -- and it’s only been a week.

Turns out that Jeff gets kind of bored without the team around. 

He knows that Lyle is with some of the other guys on a semi-douchey cruise, and that Parse is still with the Zimmermann family, but he doesn’t really have anything in particular to say to them.

  


(Turns out that Jeff is kind of a boring person.)

  


Still, Lyle sends him pictures of the ridiculous drinks he orders, and Parse has sent him a couple texts that he’s claimed are direct quotes straight from Bad Bob, but Jeff isn’t totally sold on that. He sends Lyle pictures of coney dogs when Jeff goes out for lunch with his family, and he texts Parse some of the weird teenager shit his sisters say, but it’s not the same as seeing them in person. And with Lyle, he knows it’s fine, knows they’re solid buds for life, but with Parse -- it’s different. 

They never talked, is the thing. It seemed too awkward, and the timing was bad when the Aces were thrown back into the playoffs, and they just never talked about it. Parse didn’t hang out with Jeff one-on-one after it happened, after Jeff said what he needed to say, but he’s been _texting_ him. That’s gotta mean they’re still okay, even if Parse doesn’t ever want to talk about the whole feelings thing again. 

Jeff doesn’t regret telling him, at least not exactly, but he does regret not talking to Parse about it after they won the Cup.

  


(Jesus, he won the Cup. It’s not even his first time, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to the idea.)

  


“Hey, Jeff,” one of the twins says from the entry way, making him jump where he’s sitting alone on the couch, “can I borrow a pen?”

He gives her a _you’re dumb_ face. “Why would I have one? Go get one from your room or something.” 

“Je-ee-eff, it’s important.”

“What on earth could be so important?” He always has to watch his language when he’s home, which sometimes means he talks like a grandpa. He likes doing it, though, because it annoys his sisters.

She looks way too pleased with herself. “An actual famous hockey player is here, and I want his autograph.”

Jeff sneers at her automatically before he can really process what she’s saying, and then Parse walks in behind her. 

Parse grins at him, looking completely at ease even when he’s wandering into Jeff’s living room without an invitation. “Am I interrupting your big summer plans, Troy?” 

“Yeah,” Jeff says, and his mouth is suddenly dry. “I’m gonna have to reschedule sitting on the couch and trying to figure out why the TV isn’t playing Netflix.”

“Oh shit, it’s not playing Netflix?” his sister says, and Jeff shoots her a dirty look. 

“Language,” Parse says mildly, and he fixes the TV while Jeff and his sister share a silent conversation that ends with her darting off to tell the rest of the family that Kent Parson is in their house. 

Jeff wishes he weren’t wearing his gross sweatpants, and his socks have a stupid pineapple print on them, and Parse always looks way better than him. Jeff should probably try not to stare at Parse’s arms, which are darker than he’s ever seen them. “I didn’t even know you could tan,” Jeff says. 

Parse tosses down the remote control now that he’s magically fixed their TV. He looks at Jeff like he’s funny. “Sometimes. I don’t burn as long as I don’t overdo it.” 

Jeff is suddenly very aware that this is the first time they’ve been alone in a month, and for some reason all he can think of to say is something about how it’s weird that Parse got tan in Canada, of all places, but he knows that’s stupid, so he just sits there. 

Then the rest of the Troy family finds them, and Jeff is momentarily saved from the task of continuing the conversation. His mom gives Parse a hug so tight he looks like he can’t breathe, but he’s grinning and blushing when it’s over, and Jeff’s dad looks slightly starstruck even though he’s met Parse three times before this, and he congratulates Parse on the great season over and over until even Jeff’s sisters look mortified. 

“Are you just stopping by, or were you thinking about staying over?” Jeff’s dad asks. “You’re more than welcome to stay, as long as you want. But you’d have to share Jeff’s room.” He grins at Jeff, teasing. “We’re still waiting for him to use all that hockey money to buy us a bigger house that actually has guest rooms, so it’s his fault.”

“Oh my god,” Jeff says into his hands. He doesn’t remember when he started hiding his face, but he doesn’t think he can stop anytime soon.

Parse just keeps smiling. “I wasn’t sure what my plans were, but if you’re sure I won’t be getting in your way, I’d love to stay.”

Jeff’s sisters look way too excited. And the way they’re pulling out their phones and typing frantically can’t mean anything good.

“Jeff, you don’t mind sharing, do you?” his mom asks sweetly, and what the hell. He has never told her he likes Parse, he doesn’t think he’s even hinted at it, but the way she’s smiling at him tells a different story. 

“It’s fine,” he says, and he feels sort of like a martyr, or like the victim of a well-organized prank, maybe. “Parse, do you have your stuff?”

It turns out that Parse has, like, a thousand bags stacked neatly on the front porch, and Jeff’s mom makes Parse sit down on the couch to chat while Jeff and his dad carry everything up to Jeff’s room. “He’s not exactly a light packer, is he,” Jeff’s dad says, and Jeff has to laugh.

When they’re done, Jeff stays behind to change into a slightly more attractive outfit, and by the time he returns downstairs, Parse is watching in bemusement as the rest of the Troys put on their shoes and grab their wallets. “We’re headed out,” Jeff’s mom explains. “It’s a perfect day to see some museums, and we don’t want to get in your way, do we?”

The girls look delighted in a way that genuinely scares Jeff, and his dad fucking _winks_ at him before they leave. 

Unbelievable.

  


  


  


“I like your family,” Parse decides once they’re alone. And holy shit, now they really _are_ alone. “You make more sense every time I meet them.” 

Jeff rolls his eyes. “I’ll pretend that’s a good thing.”

“Whatever, I know you love them.” 

And yeah, he does. Jeff tries to ignore the way his body gets a little warmer just from hearing Parse say the word love, because that’s just sad. “So -- what’s up? Did the Zimmermanns run you out of town?” 

He sort of regrets saying it immediately, because maybe something did go wrong with the Zimmermanns, but Parse just beams at him. “Nah, I don’t know. I got kind of bored, I guess? And I figured, hey, I’ve never been to Detroit. Jeff can show me around.”

“Like hell you’ve never been to Detroit, we play here every year.” And Jeff’s extended family always roots for the Red Wings, which is really fucking rude, but Jeff gets it.

Parse shrugs. “Still, you can show me around.” He pauses, looks at Jeff and quickly looks away, takes off his hat and puts it back on again, and it’s the first time Jeff’s seen Parse look anything less than cool and collected all afternoon. “Uh, wanna go for a walk? I haven’t seen your neighborhood, like, ever.”

“Sure,” Jeff says, and he puts on his shoes facing away from Parse so he can take a few deep breaths. Fuck. Whatever Parse is here for, whatever he’s here to _say_ , it’s probably gonna be on this walk. 

He puts on his brave face, and then they leave.

  


  


  


  


Parse doesn’t talk about _shit_ on their walk. Or, he talks about every single thing he did with the Zimmermann family, and he talks about his opinion on every pizza delivery place in Vegas, and he talks about a few new offensive plays he’s been thinking about for next season, but it’s all so awkward, his voice rushed and just a little louder than normal, and he avoids Jeff’s eyes the whole time.

He shakes his head at the size of the houses in Jeff’s neighborhood. “Should have known you were a rich boy, Swoops,” Parse says. “Raised in the goddamn lap of luxury.”

Jeff shrugs, not sure if he’s being chirped or reprimanded. “Yeah, I guess. It’s weird coming back.”

Parse just grins at him, and in the afternoon sunlight Jeff thinks he can see every freckle on his nose. “Hey, where can we get some ice cream around here?” Parse asks, and Jeff drags him to the Dairy Queen that’s a ten minute walk from his house. 

“None of this is on our diet plan,” Parse informs him as they wait in line.

“It was your idea,” Jeff says, and he orders a medium-sized Blizzard just to see the horrified look on Parse’s face. 

Parse orders a kids’ cone, but after he finishes it he stares longingly at Jeff’s Blizzard until Jeff caves in and lets him have a few bites. “You’re the best,” Parse says through a mouthful of peanut butter cups.

“Yeah, that’s enough,” Jeff says, and grabs the cup back from Parse. “Ready to go back?”

Parse nods, but he seems tense and uncomfortable the whole walk back, which makes Jeff feel tense and uncomfortable too, even though he doesn’t even know why.

  


  


(Well -- he might be able to guess why. They’re probably going to talk about Jeff’s feelings, which he knows is something they really need to do, but now that it’s happening in real life, maybe, he’s suddenly wishing his family hadn’t left so he could still use them as a buffer.)

  


  


When they get back, Jeff punches in the garage code and lets them in through the door from the garage to the house. Parse goes into the bathroom to wash off the ice cream that dripped on his hands, and Jeff throws away the remainder of his Blizzard because he’s starting to feel a little sick. He’s just trying to decide if it’s a good idea to suggest they watch a movie when Parse comes back into the kitchen.

“Um,” Jeff says, eyes stupidly stuck on how cute Parse’s feet look in his socks, “wanna watch a movie now? I’m so full I can’t move.”

Parse rotates one of his shoulders back, stretching his arm out, and looks anywhere but at Jeff. “Maybe in a little. Do you have something to drink? Like, lemonade or something?”

That gives Jeff something to do with his hands, and he tries to get his heart rate back down to normal as he opens the fridge, takes out a jug of pineapple mango juice, and pours two glasses. He wipes his hands on his jeans. “Not lemonade, but close enough.”

“Thanks,” Parse says, and he doesn’t look like he’s in the mood to leave the kitchen. He leans against the counter, tracing a finger across the condensation on the outside of the glass but not lifting it to drink any. “So.”

Jeff’s heart picks up right where it left off, and he struggles to take a normal-sized sip of juice. “What’s up?”

“I never talked to you much about this,” Parse says, still refusing to look up at Jeff’s face, “but I was pretty much in love with Jack in high school.”

Jeff freezes, for a second, but then he manages to nod, even though Parse isn’t looking. He’s too nervous to make any sound, both because he might say the wrong thing and because Parse might lose the nerve to keep talking if he’s interrupted at all.

“I mean, not pretty much. I _was_ in love. Pretty much have been ever since. I met him when I was sixteen, and it’s not like I fell in love with him right that second, but it was pretty fast. And that was ten years ago, and there’s probably something wrong with me that I couldn’t get over it even after -- after all that, but I didn’t. Sometimes I didn’t think I was even built to do anything else, except, like, hockey.”

Jeff really can’t breathe. He doesn’t know where this is going, and he wants to focus on just listening when Parse is telling him all this personal stuff, but he also can’t stop himself from trying to figure out where this is going. 

He wants to reach out, to put a hand on Parse’s shoulder to calm him down or at least make him feel a little better, but it doesn’t seem right. 

Parse takes a deep breath, loud and harsh, and meets Jeff’s eye for just a second before looking away, eyes focused just beyond Jeff’s head. “And this year has been really fucking weird, you know? Because I got this -- this fantasy, pretty much, everything that I thought had to happen for me to be happy again, it actually happened. I mean, I lifted the Cup with Jack, for Christ’s sake. He likes me again. He hugged me yesterday, like, four times. I used to dream about this type of stuff, you know?” 

Jeff doesn’t know. He only remembers when Parse dreamed about Jack dying.

“I’ve been living out this stupid fantasy, I’ve had all these things happen that I never believed would happen -- and it’s not what I expected at all. I love Zimms, that’s never gonna change, but it’s not the same. Everything feels different. And that scared the shit out of me, Jeff, you have no idea. I thought I was either gonna die alone wanting him or somehow get to be with him again, but I never thought I would stop feeling this way about him. That scared me so much, Jeff. I haven’t _not_ been in love with him for ten years, and now he’s here, and it’s not the _same_.”

“I --” Jeff really has no idea what to say. It’s not like he’s going to say _that’s too bad_ , like he actually wants Parse to still be in love with Zimmermann, but Parse looks so upset. He doesn’t know what to _say_. “I didn’t know. That sounds really hard.”

“Yeah,” Parse says. Now he breathes in again, steadying himself, and looks right at Jeff. “And when I was figuring all this out, all I wanted to do was talk to you about it. Well, not gonna lie, I wanted to talk to Lyle too, but I kept thinking about how much better I’d feel if you were there, if you could, you know, hug me and stuff, and I know you just like to hug people, but I’ve always kind of felt like you care about me more than other people do? Like, even before you, uh, told me. And that used to scare me, because it felt like you wanted something from me and I didn’t know what it was, so sometimes Lyle’s been easier to talk to as a friend, but you’ve always been different. In a good way. I’ve always known how much you -- how much you care.”

“You’re not wrong about that,” Jeff manages to get out, even though his throat is starting to get tight. He wants to hope he knows where the conversation’s going now, but he also doesn’t want to be wrong. 

Parse smiles up at him, and for a second the balance shifts, like they’ll both start laughing if they keep looking at each other for too long, but then Parse leans backward and it’s serious again. “And I know I’m delivering, like, a full-on sermon here, but I kept thinking about what I wanted to say when I was driving, and I’ll be mad at myself if I don’t get it all out, so just -- bear with me.”

Jeff doesn’t know if Parse is really looking for permission, but he nods anyway. “Got it.”

“I guess -- I just always thought, if I ended up with anybody, it’d be Zimms. Maybe that’s because I’m used to wanting that, maybe it’s because I don’t know what it would even look like to have a love life, if you can call it that, that’s not completely fucked up, but the idea of trying to meet someone new made me feel sick. And dude, you really threw me off when you told me you liked me --”

“Loved you,” Jeff corrects, because he’s starting to think he can see where this is going, and because Parse isn’t the only one who knows how to be a little shit.

“--okay, or that, and it threw me off because you’re actually nice, and awesome, and, you know, care about me, and that didn’t seem like it could happen. And I’m not gonna lie, I’m kind of scared that this could be really bad. I mean, for you, not for me, because I don’t think you one-hundred percent know what you’d be getting into, and I don’t want to see you get screwed up, but you deserve to know -- it took me a long time to figure this out, but I do like you.”

Jeff stays still, even though his instinct is to smooth out Parse’s hair until he looks less like he’s going to fall over.

“I mean, I’ve always liked you, as a friend, but I’m attracted to you, too.”

  


(And Jesus, if this isn’t just Parse all over. He might sell it to the press that he’s a chill guy, always the coolest in the room, but Jeff is way too familiar with the way he’s compelled to break everything down into its smallest parts, to make it more manageable so it doesn’t scare him. Apparently that urge extends to _this_ , this thing between them, as well.)

  


“I like you, and I’m attracted to you, and I feel safer and better when you’re around, but I don’t know if that’s enough. You’re important to me as a friend, and as a teammate, and I’m scared that if we tried anything, it could ruin that. Maybe that’s stupid, because you’d never do anything to ruin things even if it went bad between us, but I don’t know. I just don’t know what to do about what I’m feeling.” Parse stares down at the counter. “Just wanted to make sure you knew.”

“Okay,” Jeff says slowly. “Two things. Well, three. First, breathe. You’re okay. Second, drink some of your juice, Parse. You need it.” He pauses, but Parse is hanging on his every word and won’t grab his damn juice, so Jeff just sighs and pushes on. “And third, it’s okay that it’s scary. And that it might not work out. I mean, I was scared as fuck when I told you how I felt, but I don’t regret it at all. Even when you never said anything to make me think you wanted me too, I didn’t regret it. Some things are too important to let fear hold you back, right?” Jeff looks at Parse until he’s sure he gets it, and he smiles when Parse finally breathes out and drinks some of his stupid juice. “And I think this is one of those things.”

“Right,” Parse says, his voice still a little shaky.

“And I’ll care about you no matter what, okay? If we stay friends from here, or if we try it and it doesn’t work out, whatever. You’re important to me, and you always will be.”

“Yeah, I think I know that,” Parse manages, and now Jeff does reach out for him. Parse slumps into Jeff’s side, and Jeff wraps him up in his arms, as tight as he knows how without squeezing too hard. He closes his eyes and lets his face brush against the top of Parse’s head for just a second, where Parse’s hair is soft and tickly against Jeff’s cheek, where it smells like coconut shampoo and sweat.

“Jeff,” Parse mumbles, and he slides his palms against Jeff’s sides. His hands are warm, even through Jeff’s shirt.

Jeff lets himself kiss Parse’s hair, which is something he’s pretty much always wanted to do. “So are you gonna try this?” he asks, even though the way Parse’s stupid pointy chin is jutting into his shoulder as Parse noses against his neck has already answered that question.

“Yeah.” Then Parse huffs out a quiet laugh, his breath sending goosebumps over Jeff’s neck. “I guess I have to, or else you’ll think I’m a coward forever and ever.”

Jeff leans down lower, where he can leave a kiss on Parse’s ear. “But you’re the cutest coward. My favorite one.”

“Thank you,” Parse whispers, completely serious, and he doesn’t move from Jeff’s arms for a long time.

  


  


  


*** 

  


  


  


They keep each other within arm’s reach, after that.

Parse had enjoyed his week in Detroit, had been surprisingly fascinated by the Motown museum in particular, and Jeff had been dragged to Queens with the innocent optimism of someone who didn’t realize he was about to meet his boyfriend’s mom for the first time in an official boyfriend capacity, but it had turned out that the real test was tagging along with the Parson family to a Mets game -- they were all superfans who glared at him whenever it was obvious that he wasn’t paying attention, and Jeff would rather take a nap than watch baseball, so it wasn’t exactly a rousing success.

  


  


(“He’s okay, I guess,” Parse’s sister said in the car afterward, like Jeff wasn’t right there, “but I’d hold out for someone who actually knows what OBP is.”

“Sure, right,” Parse had said, even as he lightly traced over each one of Jeff’s fingers, sending goosebumps up Jeff’s arm.)

  


  


Parse had been all ready to keep traveling, showing Jeff the TripAdvisor pages for different hotels and attractions in Rome, but Jeff’s always been more of a homebody at heart. He’d felt bad, had offered to personally take care of Kit while Parse went to Italy, but Parse had shrugged it off and gone back to Vegas with him instead. 

They’d visited some of their regular places and attended a couple charity events; Parse had gone with a few of the other Aces to Vegas Pride while Jeff got over a cold and read a whole Stephen King book in one sitting.

But it’s easiest to just stay in, where they can lean into each other without feeling scrutinized, and they’re both at Parse’s house on a Wednesday night, Jeff sitting on Parse’s couch with his feet propped up on the coffee table while Parse sits half on top of him, half on the couch.

Jeff pretends to watch TV while he mostly enjoys the fact that Parse’s shoulder and neck are just a few inches away from him, and he leans forward to kiss the fabric of Parse’s t-shirt where it’s stretched over his shoulder. From this angle he can see Parse’s phone screen, and he rolls his eyes when he sees that Parse is caught up in a groupchat with Zimmermann and Eric Bittle, the three of them in a debate about the merits of football. Parse seems to be losing.

“Just because you don’t get the rules doesn’t mean it’s a dumb sport,” Jeff says, and he lets out an exaggerated _oof_ when Parse elbows him in the ribs.

They’re still sprawled out like that when Lyle and Dressler come over. After texting to check if they’re decent, Lyle lets himself and Dressler in with the key Parse gave him, and they make a mess of Parse’s kitchen and then take over the other couch, acting way more interested in whatever stupid cop show is on TV than Jeff is. 

“You guys going out tonight?” Lyle asks, shoveling lasagna into his mouth.

“Nah,” Parse says, right as Jeff asks, “Where’d you get the lasagna?”

“It was in the fridge,” Lyle shrugs.

Jeff lightly shakes Parse’s shoulder. “What the fuck? You made lasagna?”

“Oh. Yeah. You can have some later if they don’t eat it all.” 

Jeff tries to pretend he’s not having an inappropriately emotional reaction to the fact that Parse cooked for him. “Cool,” he mumbles, and he kisses Parse’s temple once, quickly, even though he knows it’ll embarrass him.

  


(Well -- he does it partially _because_ he knows it’ll embarrass him.)

  


“Aww,” Dressler says, pointless but earnest. 

Parse’s fake scowl is visible even when Jeff is leaning behind him. “Ugh. Whatever.” He wipes dramatically at the spot where Jeff had kissed him, but he leans his head back against Jeff’s shoulder, so it’s good.

Lyle grins at Jeff. He’s still a little intolerable to hang out with these days, always looking amused and smug whenever they do anything remotely couple-y, but Jeff knows he deserves it after whining to Lyle for three years straight about how much he likes Parse. “If you wanna go out tonight, though,” Lyle says, “some of the guys are going to Mandalay Bay. Towney and Becker and Gordo, I think.”

Parse cranes his neck to look at Jeff behind him. “What do you want to do?”

“I dunno,” Jeff says, face heating up, “what do you want to do?” He actually wants to stay in as much as possible, because this is where they’re hidden away and can keep touching each other like this, looking at each other as much as they want to, but it’s not like he can say no every time there’s something to do in the city.

Lyle tries to feed Kit a hunk of lasagna, even as Parse threatens to kick him out. “It’ll probably be boring, though,” he says. “If you want to stay in and cuddle for ten hours straight or whatever it is you do, that’s cool.”

“Yeah, we’ll probably stay in,” Parse says casually, still texting Zimmermann and Bittle, and Jeff leans in to kiss him again, this time as an automatic response and not as a way to embarrass him. Parse huffs out an irritated breath anyway, and Jeff snickers.

“Aww,” Dressler says again.

Lyle gets up, scratching Kit behind the ears and then ruffling Parse’s hair. “Cool. Also, just letting you guys know, Gordo totally thinks something’s up. You’re probably either gonna have to tell him or come up with a really good cover story, I don’t know.”

That doesn’t really bother Jeff, actually. He’s pretty much thrilled at the idea of more people knowing he somehow landed Parse as a boyfriend, as long as those people are trustworthy and cool about it. “Okay, good to know.” He can _feel_ Parse’s surprise at how chill he’s being, but even though Jeff took, like, a billion years to come out to anyone besides Lyle and his own family, he’s been comfortable with the quicker pace of sharing their relationship. Parse’ll figure it out one of these days.

“Well, then, guess we’ll see you guys later,” Lyle says, and Dressler waves.

“Don’t have too much fun without us,” Parse says, and Lyle and Dressler let themselves out, shutting the door behind them.

“They left their plates out,” Jeff says. “Lazy assholes.”

“Whatever,” Parse says, and he tilts his head back until Jeff kisses him. 

This is Jeff’s favorite thing, no question. He pulls insistently at Parse’s shirt, and Parse scoots around so the angle’s a little better, and it’s probably, like, way past their hundredth make-out session at this point, but it still sends the same warm buzz across Jeff’s skin, his whole body filled with the awareness that those are Parse’s fingers digging into him, Parse’s knee pushing against his own. 

He pulls away to breathe, keeping one hand where it was on Parse’s face and moving the other so he can teasingly nudge the phone out of Parse’s hand. “I can’t believe you’re texting your ex right in front of me. Rude.”

“Keep kissing me and I will never talk to him again,” Parse says, voice hoarse, and Jeff rolls his eyes before tucking Parse’s body against the couch cushion and climbing on top of him. “Mmm.”

They kiss, minutes and minutes passing with Parse’s cold palms warming up against Jeff’s skin under his shirt and so many _I love you’s_ slipping out of Jeff’s mouth that he’d be embarrassed if he didn’t know for a fact that Parse was way into it. 

They only stop kissing when Kit’s angry meowing gets so loud that Parse grabs Jeff’s face and holds him a few inches away. “She’s hungry,” Parse says. He’s got a thumb resting lightly on Jeff’s lower lip, and Jeff can’t stop looking at him.

“You gonna feed her, then?” Jeff asks anyway, like he doesn’t know where this is going.

“You’re closer, you do it,” Parse says, and he strokes his thumb over Jeff’s lip, slipping it inside for just a moment. 

Jeff groans, but he rolls off of Parse without further comment. He grabs the plates Lyle and Dressler left behind and deposits them in the dishwasher before pulling Kit’s food out from under the sink. He almost trips on Kit -- a rookie mistake, forgetting how Kit will weave between his ankles as soon as she sees the bag of food -- and ignores Parse laughing at him from the living room. 

When Jeff’s finally got the cat’s food taken care of, he stands up and stretches, glancing over to where Parse is now sitting up on the couch. Jeff takes in Parse’s messy hair, the smirk growing into a lopsided smile, and he leans against the counter and just lets himself _look_.

Parse looks back. He quiets down, smile fading into a more open, peaceful expression, his eyes blue-green and clear and so, _so_ content when they meet Jeff’s, and Jeff thinks he can feel his heart literally skip a beat.

He never expected Parse to look at him like that, is the thing. Never even imagined it, because it’s more than he’d even be capable of imagining -- fondness, amusement, warmth, the kind of trust he knows Parse is almost afraid to feel. It’s the kind of look Jeff could make a home in, if Parse lets him, and Jeff thinks he will.

Parse blinks, then grins at him. He’s almost too good to look at, like always, but Jeff’s practicing. “Hey,” Parse says, and Jeff really will give him anything he wants. Parse grins bigger. “Get over here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! I've been blown away by the kindness and sheer volume of comments I've received; maybe I should write for the Kent Parson fandom more often...... you guys are nice.
> 
> \- if you want to follow me on Tumblr, check my profile here on AO3 for the url, because I change it a lot.  
> \- [this](http://btihockey.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/darnell-nurse.jpg) picture of darnell nurse is my personal facecast for brandon lyle. ever since that day, my life has known only peace.
> 
> I'm a playlist addict. [Here](https://open.spotify.com/user/monstrosit/playlist/2uDZOGEd6qHv76GUpyLjPs) is a playlist for Jeff & Parse in this fic; I'm trash and had to include one HSM song. Also I'm trash for including Biebs, but tbh that song was the very first musical inspiration I had for this fic, so I couldn't delete it. 
> 
> If you want to listen to my magnum opus..... my mona lisa..... it's [this](https://open.spotify.com/user/monstrosit/playlist/7ItcB4sOUIiY9eCmDK7go7) playlist of what I imagine to be the exact soundtrack of Jeff and Parse's wedding reception, someday. Starting with their first dance and continuing on through the night. I AM ASHAMED of how happy this headcanon makes me, but tbh I don't care. They totally convince Lyle to propose to his gf in the middle of the reception, even though it's normally considered tacky to do that at someone else's wedding. god i love them.
> 
> anyway thank you for everything! you guys are the best.


End file.
